


There's Nothing to Save

by camwolfe



Series: Breath I'll Take, and Breath I'll Give [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Drug Abuse, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-18 07:42:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2340515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camwolfe/pseuds/camwolfe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been six weeks since Steve took his non-optional break from the Avengers. They've called him back now, though, because they ran into a certain old friend of his while on a mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. On the things you have done

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "What He Wrote", by Laura Marling.
> 
> Hey, guys! I'm back. I've been gone for all of one day. Anyway, THIS IS BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND. And by popular demand I mean that I received messages from some very unhappy people who said that I rushed the ending of my other fic. Which I did, but I was stressed and busy and it just sort of... happened. But anyway, here's the sequel! For those of you who didn't read the first part, it's called "Breath I'll Take and Breath I'll Give" and you'll probably want to read that before you try and read this. Otherwise it won't make much sense. I mean, you can read this without reading the first one if you really want. IT'S YOUR CHOICE.
> 
> Also, I need to mention that 99% of the messages I get on here and on tumblr have been absolutely amazing! I love all of you, each message and comment and kudos makes my day. I'm so grateful and happy and you all are amazing people. I love hearing your feedback and your thoughts! It was just a certain few messages I received that upset me a little. And honestly I'm pretty sure they were almost all from the same person who just kept going on anon. 
> 
> BUT ANYWAY. 
> 
> Here ya go.

At Natasha’s insistence, they’d stopped by Steve’s apartment before they got on the plane. He grabbed some clothes and shoved them into a duffel bag as quickly as he could. He was impatient to get going.

Natasha refused to tell him any more about it until they were on the plane. It was a private jet that Tony had sent, and they took off immediately after Steve and Natasha got on. Steve’s normal fear of flying was overshadowed by his impatience, and he fidgeted in his seat while staring at Natasha.

Once they were in the air, Natasha finally put down her phone and looked at him.

“I’m sorry, Steve. I didn’t mean to leave you hanging like that. I just didn’t feel comfortable discussing this in public. You never know who’s listening.”

Steve tried not to roll his eyes. “My apartment isn’t public.”

Natasha raised her eyebrows at him. “No, but you haven’t swept it for bugs lately, have you?”

Steve frowned and opened his mouth to reply, but he stopped himself. “Okay, never mind. Just tell me.”

“Okay,” Natasha said calmly. “First of all, this happened three days ago.”

Steve stared at her. “You found him three days ago, and you’re just telling me now?”

“Yes,” Natasha said. She didn’t flinch under Steve’s glare. “Well, found isn’t really the right word. We more of… ran into him. We were chasing down that Hydra guy we were hunting, and just before Clint took the shot, someone else did. So we waited for a while out of sight, and sure enough, Barnes walks up and starts going through the guy’s pockets. I don’t know what he was looking for. But anyway, Tony dropped down and made some stupid joke, and Barnes shot him. Obviously Tony was fine, but he reflexively jumped back. You know those modifications he was making to some of Clint’s rifles?”

“Yes,” Steve said slowly.

“Well, he failed to mention that those modifications can also be controlled by his suit. He accidentally triggered the rifle Clint was using when he moved, and it fired. It shot Barnes –“

“You shot him?” Steve shouted.

Natasha winced slightly. “Yes, but he’ll be fine. It was just an accident. Clint knocked the rifle away when it fired, and it missed. Mostly. It went through his lung – Steve, calm down.”

Steve was frantically running his hands through his hair. “I should have been there. They shot him, oh my god –“

“Steve, stop. He’s fine. Everyone’s fine. He still tried to run even after he’d been shot, but he didn’t get far. We had to sedate him, and we brought him to Tony’s country house. Bruce took care of the gunshot wound, and he’s already healing.”

Steve’s frantic breaths clearly indicated that he was not, in fact, calming down. Natasha was watching him carefully. “Steve, take a slower breath. Yeah, like that. It’s all right.”

“I should have been there,” Steve said again. He was trying to remember the tactics that Sam had taught him on how to calm down, but his mind was going blank.

Natasha shook her head. “I think we did the right thing, Steve. I still don’t think you’re ready to be out in the field right now.”

“Yeah, well, look what happened when I wasn’t there!”

“That would have happened whether you were there or not."

“You don’t know that,” Steve started to say. But he was already stressed, and he was just too tired to argue. He slumped back in his seat. “Okay, fine. Forget it. It’s too late now, anyway. How is he?”

Natasha seemed a little taken aback by his rapid change in demeanour, but she answered him anyway. “He’s okay. Physically, he seems all right. He’s definitely underweight, but other than that he seems healthy enough.”

“Other than the bullet wound,” Steve muttered under his breath.

“Yes, other than the bullet wound. Mentally… I don’t know. He’s clearly capable of living and acting on his own accord, considering that he’d been hunting and tracking the same guy we were. Not to mention that he’s kept himself alive and safe since Hydra went down.”

“How’s he been since you found him?"

“He’s been sedated almost the entire time.” Seeing Steve’s frown, Natasha hurried to explain. “We tried to let him wake up, but then he tried to kill Bruce when he went in to check on him. Things almost got… a little out of hand, and we thought that we would wait for you before we let him wake up again.”

Steve slumped back against his seat. “So that’s all you know? Nothing about where he’s been since Hydra went down? What he’s been doing?”

Natasha shook her head. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”

“No, no, don’t be worry,” Steve said hastily. “Thank you, Natasha. For bringing him in, and for coming and getting me. I appreciate it.”

She smiled at him a little. “Don’t worry about it. You should get some sleep before we get there. You look tired.”

Steve laughed sharply. “Honestly, I feel like you’ve only ever seen me when I look tired.”

Natasha thought about it. “That’s probably true.”

 

Steve did what she said anyway. He tried to take a nap, but his mind was working too quickly. He’d been feeling more relaxed after his mini vacation in DC, but already he could feel his muscles tensing up again. This is what he’d wanted for so long, but now that it was happening, he could feel the stress setting back in. He’d thought he’d been ready for this, but he felt woefully underprepared. He wished Sam was here.

Steve must have drifted off at some point, because he woke up just as the plane was landing. A car was waiting for them at the small airport, and it pulled away the minute Steve and Natasha got in.

It didn’t take all that long to get to Tony’s house. The landscape around them consisted mostly of large farms and very small towns, dotted with the occasional movie theatre or bowling alley.

They drove most of the way in silence. Steve was lost in his thoughts, and Natasha was studying something on her phone intensely. Her presence and her outward appearance of calm helped Steve relax, though, and by the time he arrived he was a little calmer.

All of that progress was lost as they pulled through the gates. Tony’s ‘country’ home was a lot bigger than Steve had even expected. It was a sweeping, modern mansion, surrounded by a high glass fence that still gave a view of the surrounding countryside. It looked deserted, however. The lights all appeared to be off, and there was no one in sight.

“Tony sent all of his staff home,” Natasha said, apparently reading Steve’s mind.

“Who all is here?” Steve asked.

“Clint, Tony, Bruce, and Pepper. I haven’t even seen Pepper yet, though. I think Tony is going out of his way to keep her away from Barnes.”

“Okay,” Steve said distantly. His mind was racing again.

The driver of the car took off the minute that Steve and Natasha got out. He drove so quickly that the gate barely had time to open for him before he blasted through it.

“He’s in a hurry,” Steve said. Natasha nodded, both of them staring after the car as it disappeared down the long driveway.

“I’m pretty sure Tony told them that he’s doing highly dangerous radiation experiments here,” she said as they started to walk towards the house. “To try and keep people away.”

“Apparently it’s working,” Steve said as the front door slid open for them. All of the lights were off, but a single light blinked on as they stepped into the entrance. It turned off after a moment, and one further down the hall turned on instead.

Natasha confidently followed the path of lights that were leading them through the house. Steve followed more apprehensively. The house was modern and sparsely furnished, but it felt unused and cold. Steve felt a sudden wave of longing for his little apartment, as quiet as it was. He was out of his element in this house, with its clearly expensive furniture and concrete floors.

The lights led them down a few more hallways and to a solid wood door. Natasha pushed it open and strode inside with Steve hurrying after her.

They were in what looked like a more comfortable living room. This room was carpeted, and had several couches and chairs arranged around a flat-screen tv. There was a pool table and a large cabinet that displayed what looked like video game accessories. This room also had no windows.

There was also a table along one wall covered in computers. Tony and Bruce were seated at the table staring at one of the monitors, but they looked up when Steve and Natasha came in. Clint was sitting on top of the pool table, working on his arrows.

Tony kicked off the wall and rolled backwards in his chair when they walked in. “Thank fucking god you’re here. Your turn, you’re up, I’m out.”

Bruce sighed. “Hello, Steve. How’re you feeling?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Steve said. “I – Clint, what the hell? Are you okay?”

Natasha had ran over to where Clint was sitting on the pool table the minute that they’d walked into the room. Steve hadn’t noticed until she turned his head towards the light, but Clint’s face had a nasty gash that narrowly missed his left eye. The other side of his face was swollen and bruised.

“M’ fine,” Clint said impatiently, leaning back to avoid Natasha’s grip on his face. “It’s just a little bruised.”

“What happened?” Steve asked as Natasha gently ran her hands over the side of Clint’s face.

“Your buddy in that room there happened,” Tony said. Steve turned to look at him, and Bruce sighed again. “Can you please go in there and explain to him that we’re trying to help? And ask him to stop trying to kill us?”

“You _did_ shoot him though,” Clint said as he ducked out of Natasha’s reach.

“You were the one holding the rifle!” Tony said indignantly.

“Yeah, but you –“ Clint started to say.

“It was an accident on everyone’s part,” Bruce interrupted. “It won’t happen again, will it, Tony?”

“Of course not,” Tony muttered.

“Well, then,” Bruce continued. He got up from his chair. “Steve, I’ll let you in to see him now, if that’s what you want.”

“Yes,” Steve said immediately. Bruce led him to a door on the other side of the room.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Bruce asked him in a quieter voice. “We can wait a while, he’s well taken care of…”

“No,” Steve said firmly. “I need to see him now.”

“Okay, okay. We put him in this bedroom when we brought him here because it doesn’t have windows, and it’s the most secure room in the house. He’s still a little drugged up from the sedation we had to give him earlier, and it should help to keep him calm. But Steve, you need to be careful. He did that to Clint’s face that morning before Clint had even opened the door all the way.”

“I’ll be fine,” Steve said as patiently as he could manage. “Thank you, Bruce.”

Bruce was still looking at him worriedly, but he leaned over and typed a code into the lock on the door. The lock beeped, and Steve grabbed the handle and stepped inside.


	2. Oh, you're in my veins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "In My Veins" by Andrew Belle.
> 
> FEATURING THE LONG-AWAITED ACTUAL APPEARANCE OF BUCKY.

Steve stepped inside the room, his muscles tensing. He’d left his shield in the room outside, thinking that it might send the wrong message. He was regretting that already.

The lights were off in the room, and the lack of windows was noticeable. The room was nearly pitch black, and it became even more so when Steve shut the door behind him. The only light came in through the space at the bottom of the door, but it was enough for Steve’s eyes to see by.

He blinked rapidly as the door shut, his eyes adjusting. At first glance, the room seemed to be empty. Steve sensed the slightest of movement behind him, and he spun around just in time to knock the knife out of Bucky’s hand.

Bucky had been standing behind the door. He jumped at Steve at the same moment as Steve stepped back. As Steve knocked the knife out of his right hand, Bucky used his left to push Steve backward. Steve stumbled and landed on his back on the floor.

Bucky was on top of him in an instant, swinging his left arm back and closing his fist. Steve braced himself for the punch, his mind flashing back and forth between what was happening and what had happened back on the helicarrier.

The punch never came. Bucky jumped off him and scrambled backward across the room until he hit the wall.

“Bucky?” Steve asked cautiously, sitting up.

There was silence for a moment, punctuated only by the sound of Bucky’s laboured breathing. It didn’t sound normal, and Steve doubted that Bucky was healing from the gunshot wound as well as he’d been told.

“What are you doing here?” Bucky snarled. He was still crouched against the wall, but his left hand was pushed against his chest. He coughed.

Steve stayed where he was on the floor. In the darkness, he could just barely make out the outline of Bucky’s face. His voice was him, though, through and through.

“My friends called me,” Steve said. “They said that they’d found you. I got here as quickly as I could.”

“You need to go,” Bucky said. He was still breathing too quickly.

“I’m not going anywhere, Bucky. I’ll go back outside this room if you want, but I’m not leaving this place.”

“No, no,” Bucky said insistently. “No, you have to go. Away from here.” He coughed again. It sounded painful.

“Bucky, please just let me – “

“No!” Bucky shouted. His voice sounded was panicked, and it was almost hysterical. “I didn’t know you were here! I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to talk to you. Just get out!”

“Okay,” Steve said tiredly. “Okay, Bucky, I’m going. I’m sorry, Bucky. I’m so sorry.”

Bucky’s laboured breathing cut off abruptly as Steve slowly got to his feet. He walked towards the door, watching Bucky the entire time.

Bucky didn’t say anything else as Steve pulled the door open and stepped back into the light. He pulled the door shut behind him, and Bruce immediately hurried over and typed another code into the keypad. A series of loud clicks from the door indicated that the locks were sliding shut again.

Steve blinked in the light. There was a couch a few feet to his right, and he moved over to it and sat down. His hands felt cold and unfamiliar. He stared at them blankly. If his hands felt unfamiliar to him, Bucky’s must feel even worse. He was probably –

“Steve? Steve, are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

Natasha was kneeling in front of Steve, gently gripping his jaw to make him look at her. He pulled away from her grip, wrapping his hands together. “No. No, I’m fine. He didn’t want to see me.”

Natasha appeared to relax marginally, but she still cast a worried look up at Bruce. Bruce was standing beside Steve, with Tony hovering behind him. Clint hadn’t gotten up from his spot on the pool table.

“I don’t think he’s healing that well from the bullet wound,” Steve mumbled. “We should – “

“I’ll take care of it, Steve,” Bruce said calmly. “You should get some rest. You’ve had a long day.”

“I’m fine,” Steve said impatiently. “Don’t worry about me.”

“We should all get some rest,” Natasha said. “We can take shifts. One of us can check in on him every hour. Is that all right?”

“I guess,” Steve said slowly. “Thank you, Natasha."

“You can have one of the other guest rooms,” Tony said, finally standing up from his chair. “Come on, I’ll –“

A loud banging sounded from the door into Bucky’s room. Everyone jumped, and Clint nearly fell off the pool table.

There was silence for a moment.

“Well,” Tony said finally. “That’s new.”

The banging noise sounded again.

“Is he trying to get out?” Clint said warily, slowly reaching for his bow.

“He can’t, even if he tries,” Tony said. “That door is reinforced with the strongest things I could come up with.”

“Why do you have – “ Steve started. “Never mind.”

Steve started walking towards the door as the noise started again. Natasha grabbed his hand, and he looked back at her.

“It’s fine,” he said, as reassuringly as he could. “I’ll just see what’s going on.”

The noise stopped.

Bruce typed the code in for him, and Steve pushed the door open. He braced himself, but the room was dark again. He stepped inside quickly and closed the door after him.

“Bucky?” Steve called as he blinked in the darkness. As his eyes adjusted, he finally caught sight of Bucky. He was curled up in the corner of the room again, against the wall. Steve could barely see his face, but he knew that Bucky was watching him.

“Are you all right?” Steve asked. There was silence for a moment.

“Yes,” Bucky said finally. “But you aren’t listening.”

Steve frowned. “Uh, listening to what?”

“To what I’m saying!” Bucky said insistently. He stood up abruptly, and Steve took an involuntary step backward. “I told you to leave. I didn’t mean just leave the room, I meant _leave_. Away from this building or house or whatever the fuck this place is.

“Bucky, I’m not going anywhere,” Steve said firmly. “Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”

“I don’t _care_ ,” Bucky hissed. “Steve, please.”

Steve’s breath caught. He hadn’t heard Bucky say his name in more than 70 years, and he hadn’t really expected to ever hear him say it again. Bucky said his name like no one else did. Steve wasn’t even sure how to explain it. It was an easy name to pronounce, and everyone else said it correctly. But when Bucky said it, it was in the cadence and slight accent that Steve was used to. That was how his mother had said his name, how his teachers had said it. How Mrs. Bailey from down the hall had shouted it after him as he and Bucky ran past her door laughing. How –

“Steve? You all right?” Clint’s voice called from the other side of the door, shaking Steve out of his head.

“Yeah,” he called back. He turned back to Bucky. “Bucky, just tell me what’s going on. I don’t know what you’re going through right now, but I want to help you.”

“Then get out!” Bucky said again.

“Why?”

“Because they – “

Bucky cut himself off and pressed himself back against the wall again.

“Bucky,” Steve said slowly. A chill was starting to creep up his spine. “Please let me help you. Just tell me what’s going on.”

There was silence for a moment.

“I can’t,” Bucky said. He sounded frustrated, and so very like Bucky had used to sound that Steve’s heart twisted.

“Why not?” Steve tried again. When Bucky didn’t reply at all this time, he tried a different tactic. “Bucky, you’re safe here. There’s five of us, not to mention that Tony’s house is probably equipped with the best security system there is. No one is going to hurt you here.”

“I don’t care about my safety,” Bucky muttered. “I care about… look, just go. Take your friends if you want. Just get out of here.”

Steve paused, forcing his breathing to stay steady. “Bucky, I need you to tell me why you want us to leave this house so badly.”

Bucky didn’t say anything, but a loud alarm suddenly sounded from the other side of the door. Steve turned and ran back out into the main room.

The others were crowded around the computer monitors.

“We’ve got company,” Clint said as Steve ran over to them. Steve went to look around Clint at the monitor, but Clint was already stepping backward. He was staring over Steve’s shoulder, his eyes wary and alert. Steve glanced back and saw that Bucky had moved to stand just within the doorframe of his room. He was still mostly in the darkness, but he was clearly watching them.

Several of the monitors showed three trucks driving rapidly up Tony’s driveway. They were painted black, and the windows were completely tinted.

“This doesn’t look good,” Bruce said from behind Steve.

“Bucky?” Steve called, turning back around to look at him. “Do you know anything about this?”

Bucky was still mostly in shadow, and he hadn’t stepped out of the doorway. “I did warn you,” he muttered under his breath.

“Are they Hydra?” Clint asked, still keeping an eye on Bucky.

“Looks like it,” Tony said, wheeling his chair around. He started typing commands into another one of the computers. “Look, I’ve got some good security here, but it’s not going to hold up under a full assault.”

“Does this mean I get to try the roof?” Clint asked eagerly. Natasha rolled her eyes.

Tony grinned at him. “Go for it.”

Clint cheered and ran out of the room, his mood evidently restored by this news.

“Okay, okay,” Steve murmured, running his hands through his hair. He really didn’t want to fight right now, but at least they were Hydra. He didn’t mind fighting Hydra. “I’ll meet them out front. Nat, you come with me.”

Natasha nodded.

“Bruce, you can come with us –“

“No, no, no way,” Tony said. “He’s worst case scenario. Last resort. Trump card. I really, really like this house, let’s not break it unless we absolutely have to, okay?”

“Okay, fine,” Steve said impatiently. “Bruce, you stay here with Tony and work all this security shit. There aren’t that many of them, we can handle this.”

“Steve?”

Everyone turned around to look at Bucky. He’d moved out to stand more in the light, and Steve finally got a chance to actually look at him. Bucky’s hair was cut shorter than the last time he’d seen him, but not by much. It was dirty and stood out in tufts. His face was thinner and more angular than Steve was used to. He was wearing what looked like a basic set of sweatpants and a hoodie.

“Yeah?” Steve said cautiously.

Bucky opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but then closed it again. He was staring at the screens, but his eyes would flick back and forth to Steve.

“They…” Bucky said slowly. “This is the only Hydra group left in the US. They sent everybody here, because they don’t have enough people to leave anyone behind. You can’t let any of them escape. You have to get them all.”

Everyone stared at Bucky in silence for a moment.

“How do you know that, Buck?” Steve asked finally. Meanwhile, the trucks were nearly at the front gates.

“They tracked me here,” Bucky said so quietly that even Steve could barely hear it. “You were supposed to have been dead by the time they got here. They’re not expecting an attack.”

“Were you supposed to kill us?” Steve asked calmly, finally put two and two together. Bucky nodded slowly.

“Wait, what?” Tony asked. “Wait, is he working with Hydra? Have I been harbouring a Hydra employee in my house for four days? What the fuck is – “

“Later, Tony,” Steve said impatiently. “We need – “

On the monitors, people starting to pour out of the trucks that had pulled up to the gate. Steve’s attention was diverted by them, but then he heard the door leading out of the room open. Everyone turned around just in time to see Bucky disappear down the hall.

“God fucking damnit,” Steve muttered under his breath as he grabbed his shield and chased Bucky out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everybody! Thank you so much to everyone who left kudos and comments on this, I love all of you so much. Same goes to everyone who sent me lovely tumblr messages! I hope you're all still enjoying this, and if you aren't then I am sorry. 
> 
> I'm sorry that it's taking me so long to post each chapter! I have a lot of things to do right now, but I'm trying to update this as much as possible. 
> 
> Also, like always, please try and forgive me for any spelling or grammar errors. I usually post a new chapter whenever I have some spare time, which is usually right before I go to bed or some other time that I'm as equally tired. I try and proof-read it at least once, but there's no way I'll catch every mistake or badly written sentence. 
> 
> I love you guys, keep sending me your feedback!


	3. A revelation in the light of day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "No Light, No Light" by Florence + The Machine. I know I've used that song before but I love it.

Every time he saw Bucky move, it still took him by surprise. Bucky had always been a fast runner, even when they were kids. Steve had spent many summer afternoons chasing Bucky around the streets, trying desperately to keep up. Bucky’s reflexes were good, and it had served him well during the war. But that was nothing like how quickly he could move now.

Bucky had been only a few feet ahead of him when he ran out of the room, but Bucky was already down the hall and around the corner when Steve got through the doorway. As Steve chased him through the house, it occurred to him that Bucky’s speed wasn’t so much a result of how quickly he could run. In a flat out race, Steve could probably win easily. Bucky was more much agile than Steve, though, and he had the advantage in the narrow hallways of the house. Steve had to keep skidding to a halt to avoid crashing into the walls or running into furniture, but Bucky seemed to have effortless control over his movement.

Steve nearly caught him when they hit a spiral staircase leading upwards, but he wasn’t close enough. Bucky burst through the doors at the top of the stairs with Steve right behind him.

The sun had nearly set completely by this point, but Steve still blinked in the light. They were on the roof of the house, which was completely flat except for a low railing.

Clint was crouched behind that railing, but he glanced back as they ran onto the roof.

“Hey, what the h-“ he started to stay, but Bucky was already moving towards him. Steve finally noticed the amount of weaponry piled onto this roof. Guns, rifles, arrows, bows, and what looked like some sort of cannon were scattered along the length of the roof.

Bucky wasted no time. In seconds he was beside Clint at the railing, and he was swinging a rifle up into his arms.

Before Clint or Steve could even protest, Bucky started firing. Steve flinched at the sound of the first shot, but Bucky’s face didn’t change at all.

The Hydra agents had been standing at the gate, clearly working on the code to get inside. Bucky’s first three shots downed three of them, and the rest dove for cover behind their cars. It didn’t help.

Bucky had taken out nine more by the time Clint grabbed another rifle and joined him at the railing.

“This is a weird day,” Clint muttered under his breath as he somehow took out two Hydra agents with one shot.

It didn’t take long for Hydra to lose.

The last guy was hiding behind one of the trucks, but he scrambled to the side when Clint shot through the windows of the car a little to the man’s right. When he jumped to the left, Bucky’s next shot got him.

When all of the Hydra agents were dead, they all paused for a minute. Nothing else moved, and the only sound was the fading echos of the gunshots and the ringing in Steve’s ears.

Clint turned to look at Bucky, his expression confused. Steve didn’t blame him.

“Bucky?” Steve said cautiously.

Bucky leaned back on his heels and clicked the safety back on the rifle. Then he placed it on the ground next to him and climbed to his feet. He didn’t move at all once he was standing. He just watched Steve, his face disturbingly blank. His eyes were alive though, and he was clearly watching Steve intensely.

“Uh,” Steve said finally. “Do you want to come back inside, Bucky?”

Bucky didn’t move or say anything. He just kept his eyes fixed on Steve.

“Uh, alright,” Steve said again. “Um, I’m gonna go back inside. If you want to come.”

Sure enough, Bucky followed Steve inside. He stayed a perfect three feet behind him at all times, even when they were going down the stairs. Clint trailed behind, still casting Steve confused looks.

Steve led his little group back down the stairs and through the house. When they walked back in to the room with the computer monitors, everyone turned to stare at them with the same look as Clint.

“So…” Tony said as they all filed in. Steve stopped walking, and Bucky stopped exactly three feet behind him. Clint ducked around them and went to stand next to Natasha. “Is he on our side now, or what?”

Bucky didn’t say anything, and so everyone looked at Steve instead. Steve stared back. He didn’t know why anyone would think he was equipped to handle this type of situation.

“Well, he did just take out most of those Hydra agents for us,” Clint said.

“He also led them here,” Tony pointed out.

“Did you mean to do that, Bucky?” Bruce asked him.

Bucky looked up. “Yes.”

“See!” Tony protested.

Steve sighed and ran his hands through his hair. He was getting tired again. “Bucky, did Hydra send you here so that you could kill us for them?”

“Yes,” Bucky said without hesitating.

“And then they tracked you here?”

“Yes.”

“But you killed them.”

“Yes.”

“Why? If you were working for Hydra, why’d you do that?”

Bucky frowned slightly, so subtly that Steve doubted anyone else noticed it.

There was a pause before Bucky spoke this time. “I don’t know.”

“Great,” Tony said, spinning around in his chair again. “He doesn’t know. The Hydra assassin that I’ve been letting live in my house for the last few days doesn’t know why he randomly slaughtered his employers.

“He isn’t Hydra,” Steve and Natasha said at the same time.

“He was working for them as of, what, two minutes ago?” Tony snapped back.

“Okay, everyone just calm down,” Bruce said. “Bucky, are you still working for Hydra?”

“No,” Bucky said firmly.

“Do you want to work with Hydra again?”

“No.”

“Are there any other Hydra agents who know you’re here?”

“No.”

“Will any other Hydra agents come after you?”

“No.”

“Are you going to try and hurt us?”

“No.”

Bruce turned back to Tony. “Tony, we’ve all had a long day. Why don’t we let him go back to his room, for tonight at least. We can discuss this more in the morning.

Tony squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Steve noticed that he looked almost as tired as Steve felt.

“Okay. Okay, fine. But he stays in there. Oh, wait. How did they track him here?”

Everyone looked back at Bucky, but Bucky didn’t respond. He’d narrowed his eyes a little, and was glaring slightly at Tony.

“How’d they track you here, Bucky?” Steve tried. Bucky seemed to relax a little at being spoken to directly, and he turned his glare away from Tony.  He raised his metal arm to his eye level and then twisted his wrist. He then pulled at something beneath one of the joints in his wrist with his other hand. Something gave way with a crack, and he pulled out a small computer chip. He held it out to Steve with his human hand.

Steve took it from his hand, and his skin brushed Bucky’s as he gently grabbed the computer chip. Steve felt like his heart stopped for a moment. It had been over seventy years since he and Bucky had touched in any way that didn’t involve violence and pain. Steve didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but Bucky’s hand felt exactly the same as it had before all of this had happened.

Steve quickly passed the chip to Tony, and shoved his hands into his pockets to hide the way they were shaking.

“I’ll take a look at this,” Tony said, standing up. “But I need some food, first. I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Steve, make yourself at home. Scary not-Hydra assassin, don’t kill me in my sleep.”

Bruce sighed and Natasha rolled her eyes as Tony left the room.

“We should all get some sleep,” Bruce said. He opened the door to Bucky’s room and turned the light on inside.

Bucky moved silently past Steve and into the room. He didn’t say anything as he walked inside, his shoulders slightly hunched. Bruce shut the door behind him and hit a button that locked the door.

Bruce showed Steve to another guest room down the hall as Clint and Natasha disappeared somewhere. Steve assured Bruce that he wasn’t hungry, and he must have been convincing enough for Bruce to leave him alone. His duffel bag was somehow already on the bed. The room was nice, with a large bed and soft sofa by the window. It had its own modern bathroom as well.

Once Bruce left, Steve took a ridiculously quick shower and changed his clothes. Then, he cautiously peeked out into the hallway. No one was there, and the house was dark again. Steve quietly closed his door behind him and crept back down the hallway towards the room that led to Bucky’s.

There was no one in the room when Steve entered. The lights were on, but the computers were off and the room was silent.

There was no light from underneath the door from Bucky’s room, but Steve tried anyway.

“Bucky?” he called cautiously. There was no reply, and he hadn’t really expected one. “Bucky, I’m going to be right out here, all right? If you need anything, just say so and I’ll hear you.”

Steve didn’t hear anything from inside the room, and he sighed slightly. He pushed one of the couches closer to the door, so that he was only a few feet away. There were no blankets or pillows in the room, but Steve didn’t really mind. He’d slept on worse.

Steve laid down on the couch, staring at the ceiling before he closed his eyes. He knew he needed sleep, but his muscles were tense and his mind was whirring. He couldn’t stop thinking about how Bucky was feeling, and if he needed something. He was obsessively trying to plan what would happen tomorrow, which even he knew was ridiculous. Steve had long since learned that there was no way you could plan for the next day.

After a few minutes of fidgeting and restlessness, Steve heard a soft knock on the other side of the wall. Steve tensed, but when no other sound came, he gradually relaxed. He actually started to drift off to sleep, to his surprise. It was comforting, knowing that Bucky was right on the other side of that wall. He was here, he was tangible. He wasn’t just a ghost drifting in the back of Steve’s mind and running through his memories. He was only a few feet away.

Steve woke up some time later. He wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed, but he thought it was probably only a few hours. The lights were still on in the room, and Steve couldn’t hear anything suspicious. Something had woken him, though, and Steve sat up.

He listened intently, and sure enough, he heard a noise coming from inside Bucky’s room. It sounded like a slight scuffling noise. Steve stood up carefully, trying to make as little noise as possible. He noticed that the light was on inside Bucky’s room now. He stepped closer to the door just as a resounding cracking noise came from inside the room.

“Bucky?” Steve called, knocking on the door. “What was that?”

When there was no reply, Steve quickly typed in the code that Bruce had shown him. The locks on the door clicked open, and Steve stepped inside the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this while sitting in the middle of my living room with my housemates all around me so I hope you all know what a risk this is. FOR YOU FOR YOU IT'S ALLLLL FOR YOUUUU
> 
> I'm always at cameronwolfe.tumblr.com if you guys want to come chat!


	4. Is this called living, or something else?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Amsterdam", by Daughter.

With the light finally on, Steve actually got to see the room for the first time. It was spacious, with a large bed against one wall and a small sitting area against the other. There was even a tv across from the sofa. There was also a modern washroom similar to the one in Steve’s room through another door.

He could also see Bucky sitting in what looked like a pool of blood.

Bucky was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. He was only wearing a pair of sweatpants, and his shirt and hoodie were discarded on the floor beside him. It looked like he’d cut into his torso by himself, and it had left a jagged gash across his ribs. He’d glanced up when Steve had walked in, but now he was looking back down at his side and pressing his hand to the wound.

“What the hell did you _do_?” Steve nearly shouted as he stumbled forward and dropped to his knees in front of Bucky. He grabbed the discarded hoodie and shirt and knocked Bucky’s hands away from the wound. Steve pressed the clothes against the gash, his hands cold. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this close to fainting. It must have been before he got the serum, if not a little longer.

Bucky seemed to relax under Steve’s grip. He slumped back against the wall, watching Steve groggily. His face was pale, and his skin under Steve’s hands was cold.

Bucky slowly lifted his metal arm and opened his fist. In his hand was another computer chip, this one slightly larger than the other.

It was pierced with shards of what looked like bone.

“Was that…” Steve said, his voice strained. “Was that in your rib?”

“Yes,” Bucky said calmly. He tried to push Steve’s hands away. “It’ll heal.”

Steve ignored him and kept the pressure on the wound. “Why didn’t you just tell me? Bucky, we could have done this for you.”

Bucky frowned at him, but the effect was a little lost by the way his head was rolling back against the wall. “No. No one is doing surgery on me. Nobody touches me.”

Steve closed his eyes for a moment. He couldn’t exactly begrudge Bucky that. “I’m touching you, though.”

“You don’t count,” Bucky mumbled, his eyes drifting shut.

“Bruce!” Steve called over his shoulder. He had no idea if anyone could actually hear him, but he didn’t want to risk taking the pressure off the wound to go get someone.

“Stop,” Bucky said, his voice slurring. “I told you, it’ll heal. Just leave it.”

Steve gritted his teeth. “Bucky, I’m not going to let you bleed to death in front of me. Okay, please, just let me get Bruce, we’ll just get him to stich you up –“

“No,” Bucky hissed, some life coming back into his face. “Nobody. Touches. Me.”

Steve tried to stare him down, but he didn’t stand a chance against Bucky’s glare.

At that moment, Bruce ran in carrying a medical kit.

“What happened?” he asked as he knelt down next to them.

“He had another tracker,” Steve said, his voice sounding alien to his own ears. “He cut it out himself. It was in one of his ribs.”

Steve held out the small tracker that Bucky had handed to him. Bruce glanced at it and then looked back at Bucky.

“Okay, I just need to see – “ he said. He reached out to move Steve’s hands away from the wound, but Bucky flinched away from him. He tried to get to his feet, but slid back down the wall again.

“Bucky, don’t,” Steve said hurriedly. “Bruce, he doesn’t like people touching him.”

Bruce pulled his hands back, but he was frowning. “He’s going to bleed out if I don’t sew that up.”

“I can do it,” Bucky mumbled. Steve and Bruce both looked back at him.

When they didn’t respond, Bucky groggily forced his eyes open again. “I can do it myself.”

Bruce reluctantly passed him the medical kit and opened it for him. Sure enough, Bucky grabbed what he needed and started sewing up his own wound. He gently pulled Steve’s hands off of him, and Steve sat back on his heels.

“The internal damage…” Bruce said softly.

“It’ll heal,” Bucky said tiredly.

Bruce looked at Steve while Bucky worked, and Steve shrugged. Steve didn’t know what to do in this situation any more than Bruce did, but he certainly wasn’t going to force Bucky to do anything he didn’t want to do.

Sure enough, Bucky clumsily but effectively sewed up the gash that ran over his ribs.

Bruce was turning the tracker over in his hands. “This was in one of your ribs?”

“Yes,” Bucky answered curtly. He finished sewing and handed the needle back to Bruce. He was careful not to touch Bruce’s skin, though. He waited until Bruce opened his hand and then dropped the needle and thread into his palm, rather than just handing it to him.

Bruce still looked concerned. “There could be bone fragments – “

“Doesn’t matter,” Bucky mumbled. He was slumping to the side a little now, his arms wrapped protectively around his ribs. “Ribs grow back.”

Bruce stared at him. “Your ribs… grow back?”

Steve had learned the hard way that his bones also repaired themselves in any way possible, and he figured that Bucky’s might as well. Bucky confirmed this when he nodded lethargically.

“Yeah. You have to do something special to make sure it doesn’t.”

Steve immediately started to feel even sicker than he had before, and Bruce raised his eyebrows. Steve could practically feel the scientific curiosity radiating off him.

“What do you have to do?” Bruce asked politely. Bucky’s eyes had been almost closed, but they snapped open again. His muscles tensed as he glared at Bruce. Automatically, Steve put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky didn’t flinch away, but he didn’t relax either.

“Why?” Bucky asked Bruce, his voice laced with suspicion.

Bruce got the hint. “I’m sorry,” he said calmly. “I shouldn’t have asked you that. It was no more than professional curiosity.”

Bucky didn’t relax. He continued to glare at Bruce, but his muscles were starting to relax again. Steve had a feeling that it was more from blood loss than from calmness. Steve hadn’t taken his hand off Bucky’s shoulder, and Bucky was leaning into it slightly.

“You’re safe here,” Bruce tried. Bucky snorted quietly. Steve didn’t blame him.

Bruce looked at Steve. Steve shrugged slightly.

With a small sigh, Bruce got to his feet. He locked his medical kit back up and grabbed it by the handle.

“I’ll get someone to bring him some food soon,” he said quietly to Steve. “He’ll need to eat, especially after this much blood loss.”

“Thank you, Bruce,” Steve said. His attention was focused entirely on Bucky, who looked like he was almost asleep. Bruce left the room quietly.

“Do you want to try to get on the bed?” Steve asked him awkwardly. “It might be easier on your ribs if you lie down there.”

“No,” Bucky mumbled in response. He didn’t elaborate.

When Steve tried to move his arm away, Bucky slumped to the side again. Steve hurriedly slid over so that Bucky was propped up against his shoulder. Bucky’s head lolled against his shoulder, and Steve froze. Bucky didn’t seem to wake up, though, and Steve was pretty sure that he was deeply, deeply asleep.

And so they stayed like that, sitting on the floor of Bucky’s room. Bucky’s weight was heavy on Steve’s shoulder, but there was no way that Steve was going to move. Bucky’s breathing was slow and slightly uneven, which was probably still a result of the gunshot wound through his lung. His skin was warm against Steve’s, and Steve actually felt… comfortable. For the first time in a long time, the racing in his head and the fear that always lurked in his mind had faded slightly. It was still there, of course. It always was. Panic about what would happen next, stress about what the next day would bring. Guilt over the things that he’d done, guilt over the things that he probably would do. Sorrow over the things that he’d lost.

Those thoughts weren’t gone, but they were a little quieter now. Steve hadn’t realized it until now, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had physical contact with someone in a non-violent way. People shook his hand occasionally, and sometimes people put their arms around him to pose for pictures. Other than that, the only time he ever touched other people was when he was dragging them out of burning buildings or punching them in the face.

What Steve really couldn’t get over was how _comfortable_ this was. One of the world’s deadliest assassins was asleep next to him, leaning against his shoulder. Steve knew that he should be wary and on guard, even if Bucky was once his best friend.

He didn’t feel that all, though, and he didn’t really want to. Bucky felt the same as he’d always felt. He was heavier now than he had been before the war, back when he and Steve used to pass out leaning against each other after a long night at the bar. He’d weighed much less during the war, mainly because he’d never managed to gain back the weight that he’d lost when he was captured by Hydra. But his skin felt the same, and his breathing was the same. He even smelled the same.

His skin was now criss-crossed with faded scars. There were fresh scars on his chest where he’d been shot, and now there was the new cut across his ribs. Even with that difference, he still just felt like Bucky. Steve absentmindedly wondered if this was how Bucky had felt when he’d seen Steve for the first time after he’d been given the serum. Like he was somehow simultaneously different, but similar in ways that couldn’t really be put into words.

Whatever it was, Steve felt himself slipping back down into sleep. The rhythm of Bucky’s soft breathing was peaceful, and so familiar that Steve felt some of the stress that he carried with him all the time start to fall away. He drifted into sleep this time, rather than automatically fighting it like he normally did.

When he woke up a few hours later, Bucky was still asleep against his shoulder. Steve shifted as slowly as he could, trying not to wake Bucky. Bucky’s eyes snapped open anyway, and he was immediately on his feet. He backed away from Steve, shifting back into the predatory stance that Steve was all too familiar with now.

“It’s me,” Steve said tiredly. He was careful not to move from his position on the floor. “It’s Steve.”

Bucky paused at Steve’s mention of his name. He blinked at Steve a few times, and then seemed to come back to himself.

Bucky sat down abruptly on the bed that he’d almost backed into, rubbing his ribs uncomfortably.

“Want to go get something to eat?” Steve asked him calmly. Steve never really felt calm, ever, and so it took a lot of effort for him to maintain his calm exterior around Bucky. “I’m sure Tony’s got a kitchen around here somewhere.”

Bucky watched him for a few minutes. Steve waited patiently. He didn’t know what was going on in Bucky’s head, but he felt like sometimes Bucky needed some time to process something and make a decision.

Sure enough, he finally responded quietly. “Okay,” he muttered, and went to the dresser. He pulled another loose grey hoodie out of one of the drawers and pulled it on, never taking his eyes off of Steve.

Steve slowly got to his feet and led the way out of the room. Bucky followed him, but he stayed exactly three feet behind him again.

Steve tried not to sigh. This was going to be another long day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I haven't updated this for so long! I had a bunch of work to do, and then I suddenly got really sick and couldn't write a single thing. Hopefully I'll be able to update more regularly from now on. Keep leaving comments and sending me your feedback, it keeps me going! Love you guys


	5. Memories will taunt you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Haunt", by Bastille.

It did end up being a very long day. Every day for the next few weeks ended up being a long day.

The first problem was that Bucky obsessively insisted on doing everything for himself. He made his own food, cleaned his own dishes, and refused to allow anyone to help him with anything. Natasha assured Steve that this was a good thing. It was important that Bucky knew how to take care of himself.

Steve agreed with her. He was glad that Bucky wanted to do things for himself. What Steve _didn’t_ like were the complications that came with it.

The issue was that despite his best intentions, Bucky didn’t really know how to do a lot of things. He could work the many televisions and computers around the house flawlessly, but he couldn’t figure out things like the toaster. He refused to let anyone show him how to use it, which meant that he would stand and glare at it until he figured it out. This was frustrating not only to him, but to Steve as well. Steve liked helping people, he wanted to help Bucky, and it was hard for him to just stand back and watch him struggle.

The second problem was that Bucky’s stubbornness was getting to be harmful to his health. There was one night where, for no reason that Steve could see, Bucky started coughing up blood. Steve assumed that he’d ripped something in his lung where he’d been shot again, but Bucky refused to let him go get Bruce or anyone else to help. Despite Bruce’s repeated attempts to reassure Bucky that he meant him no harm, Bucky still didn’t trust him. Or anyone else besides Steve, for that matter. That meant that Steve spent three nights sitting up awake and terrified, listening to the sound of Bucky struggling to breathe before he started to heal again.

In fact, Bucky seemed to actively dislike everyone who wasn’t Steve. Steve had to assume that some of that was because they’d shot him in order to get him here. He knew that part of Bucky’s dislike of Tony and Bruce was because of the whole scientist thing. Steve didn’t blame him for that at all, but he couldn’t figure out a way to convince Bucky that he could trust them.

Steve didn’t think that Bucky had any actual intentions to harm Tony or Bruce. He just seemed to be wary of them, and glared at them whenever they came within ten feet of him or Steve.

“I can take a look at that arm of yours,” Tony offered one morning. Bucky was sitting in the corner of the kitchen, scowling like normal. He was ripping a piece of bread apart and eating it slowly. “Give it some upgrades, fix some of that damage. If you want, I can even try to take the whole thing off. Give you a new cool one.”

Steve winced, knowing this wouldn’t go over well. Sure enough, Bucky looked up from his bread to glare at Tony.

“No,” Bucky said curtly. “It’s mine.”

Tony raised his hands. “Okay, okay. Just offering. Not going to touch it without your permission.”

Bucky didn’t respond, but he lowered his glare back down to his bread.

Later, when Tony had left the room and it was just Bucky and Steve sitting in the kitchen, Steve leaned towards him.

“I know it’s hard for you to see, but they really are just trying to help,” Steve tried. “They’d never do anything to you without asking your permission first, okay? I know the whole scientist thing is kind of… untrustworthy, but they’re the good kind. I promise.”

Bucky was staring out the window, and Steve wasn’t sure if he’d heard him at first.

“Do you trust them?” Bucky said finally.

“Yes,” Steve said immediately.

Bucky didn’t respond to that at all, but Steve thought that he glared at Bruce and Tony a little less after that.

 

Bucky seemed to be ambivalent to Clint and Natasha. He didn’t seem to hate them as much as he hated Tony, but he didn’t seem to like them that much either. Sometimes he watched them with interest, and at other times he ignored them completely.

Steve had a feeling he liked Pepper the most out of all of them. She would show up occasionally in his room with new clothes or towels, and she didn’t hang around after giving them to Bucky. If Bucky was struggling with how to work something like the microwave, Pepper would appear out of nowhere and politely ask him if she could heat up her dinner first. Bucky would hang back and let her work the microwave, and then she’d leave the room again with her food. Steve could tell that Bucky appreciated the fact that she didn’t try to patronize him.

Their days had quickly fallen into a kind of a routine. As much as Steve liked routine, this one was wearing him out.

Steve had quickly figured out that Bucky would panic every time he woke up if he didn’t recognize where he was. He didn’t seem to be able to repeatedly recognize the room that Tony had given him, but he usually recognized Steve after a few minutes. And so Steve had started sleeping on the couch in Bucky’s room.

Bucky would wake up like clockwork every fifteen minutes. He would sit bolt upright on the bed, his eyes wide and his lungs gasping for breath.

“It’s me, it’s Steve,” Steve would say every time. “You’re in Tony Stark’s house, in one of the bedrooms. You’re safe. You were asleep, you just woke up.”

After a few minutes of listening to Steve ramble, Bucky’s eyes would drift closed and he’d fall back asleep on his pillows again. Steve didn’t actually think that Bucky was even really awake when he did this, because he never seemed all that alert.

This pattern could continue on for hours, and Steve desperately wanted Bucky to get as much sleep as he needed. And so every night, Steve would lie on Bucky’s couch and get woken up every fifteen minutes. It always took a few more minutes for Steve to get back to sleep than Bucky, and so Steve was really only sleeping in five minute increments, all night, every night.

By around eight in the morning, Bucky would finally wake up for the final time and refuse to go back to sleep. Usually Steve could convince him to eat a little bit of breakfast, but sometimes Bucky would outright refuse. Then, they would run for however long Bucky wanted to. There was no predicting this, either. Sometimes Bucky would want to run for an hour, and sometimes for six. Steve dutifully ran next to him the whole time. They always ran outside, rain or shine.

Bucky seemed obsessed with being outside. He ran outside, ate lunch and dinner outside, and would spend his afternoons sitting outside. Steve was pretty sure that he would sleep outside if he could, except that Steve was afraid that the cold night air would be too hard on his already damaged lungs.

Steve didn’t begrudge him his desire to be outside, of course. Especially when the first time that he heard Bucky laugh was when they were outside. It was a rainy morning, and the ground on Tony’s land had turned to mud. Steve didn’t like the mud, at all. It reminded him too much of the war. But Bucky seemed to love the rain, and so Steve found himself out jogging. He slipped in the mud and fell on his face. He struggled back to his feet again, scowling, but he nearly fell over again when he heard Bucky laughing as he ran past him.

“It’s not that funny!” Steve called after him, his heart leaping in his chest.

“It was pretty funny,” Steve heard Bucky say under his breath. That was all Bucky said all morning, but Steve had a stupid grin on his face for the rest of the day.

Steve had quickly figured out that Bucky loved watching movies, of any kind. That meant that they spent most of their afternoons and evenings watching whichever movie Bucky picked out. Steve admittedly spent less time watching the movie and more time staring at Bucky, but that was okay.

Obviously Steve was ecstatic that Bucky was here with him, but he was a little frustrated by the fact that Bucky didn’t really talk. He’d answer a question that someone asked him directly, but other than that, Steve rarely heard his voice. Steve still didn’t know how much Bucky remembered, or what he was feeling like now. After having gone so long without hearing Bucky’s voice, Steve almost craved hearing him speak.

Steve didn’t have to crave Bucky’s presence, though. Bucky was never far away from him, almost to an obsessive extent. Steve slept on Bucky’s couch, and then Bucky would follow him around throughout the day. Wherever Steve went, Bucky followed. Always no more than a few feet behind him, Bucky would trail behind Steve from room to room. If Steve got up to go to the kitchen, Bucky would drop whatever he was doing and follow him there. It was a stark contrast to his obsession with independence, and Steve wasn’t sure what to make of it. Several times, Steve got out of the shower to find Bucky sitting patiently on his bed waiting for him.

The sleep deprivation and the stress of trying to keep Bucky happy and comfortable was starting to wear on Steve. He could go for a while without sleep, but the constant disruption to his sleep cycles was draining. Steve also almost obsessively tried to give Bucky whatever he wanted, within reason. If Bucky wanted to run for 8 hours straight in a hailstorm, then that’s what they’d do. If Bucky wanted to watch all of the Lord of the Rings movies three times in a row, that’s what they’d do.

Most days weren’t easy, either. There were some days that were better than others. Some days, Steve could get Bucky to smile a little. Sometimes Bucky would even ask Steve what he was drawing, or what was going on in the movie they were watching.

Other days, Bucky refused to talk at all. Sometimes he’d suddenly fly into a rage with no apparent provocation. Once, he thew a dvd case through the tv so hard that it embedded itself in the wall behind the tv. Another time, Steve found him standing in the ruins of one of the many living rooms in the house. At some point, during the time that it had taken Steve to shower and start a load of laundry, something had pissed Bucky off and he’d systematically destroyed every piece of furniture in the entire room.

Bucky stood next to him in the doorway, looking at the destruction.

“Sorry,” Bucky said quietly.

Steve sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “It’s okay, Bucky. I’ll…”

Pepper appeared beside them. Steve flinched, but she just surveyed the mess silently for a moment. Then she took the tablet out from where she had it tucked under her arm and started typing things into it.

“I’m sorry, Pepper,” Steve said slowly. “I’ll pay you and Tony back…”

Steve wasn’t sure how he was going to do that, exactly, but he’d figure it out somehow.

Pepper gave him a disapproving look. “Steve, don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been wanting to redecorate this anyway. I’m thinking of making it into an exercise room. We have too many living rooms as it is, don’t you think?”

She stepped into the room and started taking pictures of the walls. Steve saw that she’d already pulled up paint swatches on her tablet.

Bucky looked relieved, and Steve made a mental note to thank Pepper later. He’d made it up to her somehow.

Despite the stress of situations like this, things were going okay. They were hanging in there.

Well, they were hanging in there until things started going downhill when everyone had to leave for another mission.


	6. It's not like I'm above you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Haunt", by Bastille.

There had been a series of bad days leading up to the mission.

 Bucky was in a dark mood, for reasons that Steve couldn’t figure out. Well, Bucky was never in a good mood, really, and Steve couldn’t blame him for that. But knowing that didn’t make it any easier to deal with. Bucky glared at him whenever Steve tried to talk to him, and refused to eat anything at all. It seemed like Bucky was trying to out-run him on their morning jog, which of course wasn’t even possible. Steve stubbornly kept up with him, and Bucky looked even more irritated.

That particular storm took two days to blow over. Without warning, Bucky was back to his marginally-less grumpy mood. He let Steve make dinner for him, and even asked Steve which Lord of the Rings movie he wanted to watch.

Despite this, Steve was still exhausted. The lack of sleep was getting to him, but he didn’t know what to do about it. There was no way he was going to leave Bucky to sleep alone, but his eyes were burning constantly. Sometimes when he blinked, lights flickered across his vision.

The morning started off fine. They only ran for three hours that morning, and it was barely noon by the time they had showered and gotten changed. Steve dragged Bucky to the kitchen for lunch, but Clint and Natasha were already there. They both looked up as the two of them walked in.

“Good morning,” Steve said as he headed to the fridge. Natasha smiled at him.

“There’s stew on the stove if you want some,” Clint said through a mouthful of sandwich. Steve froze with his hand on the refrigerator handle. Sure enough, the smell of the stew hit him a second later.

Steve gritted his teeth and closed his eyes as his heart started to pound. His stomach twisted as images he didn’t want to see began to play across his vision against his closed eyes.

“Or not,” Steve heard Clint say, but it was if he was saying it from a distance. Steve thought Natasha was saying his name, but her voice was fading in and out. Steve knew that this was ridiculous, it was just a fucking stew. There was no reason for him to be acting like this.

No matter how insistently he tried to tell himself that, though, he couldn’t get the sensations out of his head. He could feel the refrigerator handle under his hand, but his eyes were seeing the inside of a small house in Germany. He could smell the smoke and the distinctive scent of the bodies, he could see the smaller bodies by the door, the body of the woman who had been sheltering them. He hadn’t wanted this, no one would want this –

A cool breeze from outside brushed across Steve’s face, and he gasped. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision. When his eyesight cleared a little, he saw that Bucky had placed the lid back over the pot on the stove. He was also opening every window in the room.

“Steve?” Natasha asked cautiously. She was standing on the other side of the counter, and both her and Clint were watching him cautiously. “Are you okay?”

Steve tried to say yes, but his heart was still pounding in his ears and he felt like he was going to throw up. He was trying to breathe in as deeply as he could, but he felt like his lungs were just as constricted as they had been when he’d had asthma. Behind her, Steve saw Bucky push open the sliding glass door that led out of the house.

Steve stumbled past her and out the door. He didn’t stop walking until he was far from the house, and was almost at the border of Tony’s property. There was nothing out here except for the empty field that stretched out for miles.

He climbed up a small hill a little ways, and then dropped to his knees on the ground. He let himself fall to the side and rolled onto his back. Steve stretched his arms out a little, his hands brushing the soft grass around him. He stared up at the cloudy morning sky, trying to slow his breathing a little. It was working, albeit a little slowly.

Soft footsteps approached a minute later. Steve didn’t need to look up to know that it was Bucky who climbed up the hill beside him.

Bucky laid down in the grass a few feet away from where Steve was. He too stared up that clouds that obscured the sun.

They stayed like that until Steve’s breathing was back to normal, and his head was clearer.

“Thanks,” Steve said finally. “For opening the windows. It helped.”

Bucky was quiet for a moment, but the sound of his even breathing was still comforting.

“It was the stew, wasn’t it?” Bucky asked finally.

Steve ran his hand through the grass again. It was dry and brittle under his fingers.

“Yeah,” he said finally.

“That house in Germany?”

“Yeah,” Steve said again. “You remember that?”

Bucky tilted his head back a little. “Now, yeah. Didn’t remember it until I walked into that kitchen, though.”

Steve was still dizzy, and he closed his eyes as he forced himself to breathe in through his nose. “They didn’t put it in the history books, you know. I checked.”

Bucky laughed shortly. “Yeah, I bet they didn’t.”

Steve wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, but it must have been at least an hour. By the time that Steve sat up again, his breathing was back to normal and he was no longer dizzy. He got to his feet and automatically held out his hand to Bucky to help him up.

He immediately went to drop his hand back to his side, but before he could, Bucky grabbed it and used it to pull himself to his feet. Bucky dropped Steve’s hand the moment he was on his feet, but Steve couldn’t help smiling a little anyway.

“We should get back,” Steve said, and started to walk back towards the house. “Clint might take over the dvd player again so he can watch that reality show he likes so much.”

Bucky shrugged as he jogged a little to catch up with Steve. “There are seventeen tvs and 18 dvd players in that house.”

“You counted?”

“Yes.”

“Why only seventeen tvs and eighteen – oh.”

Bucky’s mouth quirked up on one side a little. “Yeah, that’s the one I broke.”

Steve was trying to contain his excitement at having an actual conversation with Bucky, but he was also desperate not to let it stop. “Eh. Nobody needs eighteen tvs. Not even Tony.”

 They went in through another one of the doors in the house so that they could avoid the kitchen, and Steve successfully managed to avoid Clint and Natasha for the rest of the day. It wasn’t that he thought that they would judge him or anything like that, but he was pretty sure that they’d want an explanation. He didn’t really want to give them one, and he felt like it would be another checkmark on their list of ‘Reasons Why Steve Rogers Should Not Re-Join The Avengers’.

This was confirmed when Steve was not invited on the next mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys. Sorry about the delay and then the short chapter. I'm kind of busy right now, but the main problem is that I'm just kind of... off my game. I'm hoping to get back into the swing of this soon! Again, thank you so much for your comments and messages. I definitely would not have gotten this far without them.
> 
> I also posted a random AU that I wrote the other night if you're interested in reading that!


	7. So let's not lie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Corpse Roads", by Keaton Henson. 
> 
> Please read the tags before reading this chapter!

When Steve woke up one morning, he was curled uncomfortably on the couch like normal. What was different, though, was that he felt slightly more rested than he usually did. He checked his watch and found that he’d actually been asleep for a solid hour.

Steve immediately sat up and glanced at Bucky’s bed. It was empty, and the room was quiet.

He quickly got up and left the room, heading down the maze of hallways. He tried to stay calm. There was probably a reasonable explanation. There was no need to panic.

And yet, here he was. Panicking.

“Bucky?” Steve called worriedly as he walked into the kitchen. Sure enough, Bucky was sitting calmly at the kitchen table across from Natasha. Pepper and Clint were also sitting there, although Clint had his head propped up on his arms and looked like he was half asleep.

All of them looked up as Steve walked in.

“Good morning,” Pepper said pleasantly. “Did you sleep well?”

An hour of uninterrupted sleep probably wasn’t Pepper’s definition of a good night’s rest, but it was Steve’s. “Yes.”

Pepper smiled at him. “I’m glad to hear it. Want to take a seat?”

Steve stared at them all warily and sat down at the table.

“What’s going on?” he asked stiffly. Something was clearly off.

“Well,” Pepper started, but she glanced at Natasha.

“We have a mission,” Natasha said. “It’s nothing major. It’s just surveillance, really, but we offered to take it from Coulson’s team.”

“Why?” Steve asked cautiously.

“We were thinking of taking Bucky with us.”

Steve looked over at Bucky, but he was staring out the window. Steve wasn’t even sure if he was listening.

“He’ll be safe,” Natasha continued. “We’re all going. We’ll protect him. We just want to see how he does out in the field.”

Steve stared at her. “He’s not ready for that.”

“I think he is.”

Steve was starting to frown. “It’s so soon, Natasha. He barely sleeps, he doesn’t eat, and you want to take him out on a mission?”

Natasha’s face didn’t change. “We’ve all talked about it, and we think it would be good for him to get out of this house for a while.”

“He only just got out of a life like that, and you’re going to drag him right back into it?”

“I’m not dragging anyone anywhere, Steve. We-“

“I’m right here,” Bucky said sharply. Steve and Natasha stopped talking, and Steve winced. He’d been trying to never refer to Bucky like he wasn’t there, or like he was under Steve’s control.

“What do you think about this?” Steve asked him. His hands felt cold again.

Bucky had been staring out the window, but he now he turned and looked at Steve. “I want to do it.”

“You’re sure?” Steve asked him cautiously.

“Yes.”

Steve ground his teeth together and looked back at Natasha.

“I know this seems sudden, Steve, but we’ve been talking about this for a while. We need to see how he is without you around to run interference for him. This is for you, too.”

“For me?”

“Yes,” Natasha said calmly. “You could use a break.”

“I’m fine,” Steve protested.

“Bucky mentioned that you haven’t been sleeping,” Pepper said. “And he wants you to be able to get a break from him for a while.”

Steve looked at Bucky, alarmed. Bucky was staring out the window again. “Bucky, I don’t need a break from you. I’m fine.”

Bucky looked almost exasperated as he turned to look at him. “That’s not true.”

Steve dropped his head onto his hands. “I just… Bucky, I just don’t think you’re ready for something like this.”

“Steve,” Natasha said gently. “It’s only for a few days. We’ll take care of him, I promise. We’re not just going to throw him into combat or something like that. If there are any problems, we’ll come right back here.”

Steve had lots of arguments against this bouncing around his head, but he was so, so tired, and so stressed. He honestly just wanted to go back to bed at this point. “I’m… okay, look. Bucky, I’m not in charge of you. If you want to go with them on whatever mission this is, then go for it. I’ll be here, I guess.”

Bucky looked happy at this, and Pepper and Natasha exchanged a glance. Clint still looked asleep.

“You don’t have to stay here, Steve,” Pepper said. “You can go wherever you’d like, and we can just meet you back here.”

Steve laughed shortly. “Where would I go?”

No one said anything, and an awkward silence fell. Steve sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

“When will you be back?” he asked.

“On Thursday,” Natasha said. “We’ll check in with you every day, and Pepper will be here.”

“If you have any concerns or want to contact them, you can just ask me,” Pepper assured him.

Steve rubbed his forehead. “All right. Well, uh, good luck, I guess.”

Apparently they were leaving right there and then, because they all started getting ready. Bucky did actually seem excited about going, even if Clint refused to let him take any of his guns.

Natasha said that Bruce and Tony had gone ahead and met Thor and Jane at the location. Steve hadn’t even known that they’d left the house. Natasha and Clint went to get one of the cars out of the massive garage, and Bucky waited for them in the doorway. Steve leaned against the wall, his arms crossed.

“You sure you’re okay with this?” Bucky asked him quietly.

“Bucky, it doesn’t matter if I’m okay with it or not. It’s your life, you can do whatever you want.”

Bucky nodded and looked down at the ground. “Yeah, I know. But it… it matters to me if you’re okay with it.”

Steve leaned his head back against the wall. He was so tired. “I mean… look, if this is what you want to do, then I’m okay with it. I just… I’ll be worried. About you.”

Bucky smirked at him a little. “I think I’ll be okay.”

“I know you will,” Steve said, but his chest felt tight. “Just call me and let me know how things are going, okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said as Natasha and Clint pulled up to the front door in some ridiculously fancy car. “You get some sleep while I’m gone, okay?”

Steve waved half-heartedly as Bucky got into the car. He went back into the house before the car pulled down the driveway, but the roar of the engine was loud enough for him to hear it disappear down the driveway.

Pepper had disappeared, and Steve found himself wandering around the empty house. He eventually got changed and went for a run, but he’d gotten used to having Bucky’s company. He only ran for an hour before he came back and showered.

Steve decided to shake off some of the exhaustion that he carried with him constantly, and he laid down on his bed. It was so quiet without the sound of Bucky’s breathing, though, and the silence was disturbing. His mind kept racing, wondering how Bucky was doing. Wondering if the others were all right. Thinking about what the mission actually was. He also couldn’t stop the thoughts that insisted that he should be there, fighting beside them.

After an hour of lying on his bed in the dark and quiet, Steve gave up. He made himself lunch, and ate it while watching a random movie he’d picked from the shelf.

He ended up spending the afternoon watching movies by himself. He picked up his sketchbook a few times, but his head felt cloudy and slow. Too slow to pull out memories from and recreate them on paper.

Steve was watching some movie about astronauts when Pepper rushed in. Steve immediately sat upright, alarmed.

“Oh, no, they’re fine,” Pepper said hastily when she saw his expression. She was tapping frantically at her tablet. “This is something else. Apparently something’s gone wrong with one of Tony’s bank accounts, and I need to go sort it out. Will you be okay here by yourself?”

“Of course,” Steve said. “Do you need help?”

“No, no, it’s fine,” she said quickly. “Thank you for the offer, though. Okay, I’m really sorry to leave you here alone, but I have to take care of this. The house is completely stocked with everything you could need, but just give me a call if you do need something –“

“Pepper,” Steve interrupted. He tried to smile reassuringly at her. “I’ll be fine.”

Apparently it worked, because relief flashed across her face. “Okay. Thank you, Steve. I’ll hopefully see you in a few days.”

Steve carried her suitcase to the car for her, and watched as her car pulled down the driveway too. He walked back into the house slowly, his limbs feeling heavy.

He put a frozen pizza in the oven for his dinner, and ate it in the kitchen alone. It was already getting dark outside, and the sunset over the hills was beautiful. Steve felt weirdly detached from its beauty, though, and the pizza tasted bland in his mouth.

Steve finally cleaned up his dishes and wandered back to his part of the house. He tried lying down in his bed again, but the quiet continued to bother him. He turned on the tv in his room, more for the sound than for the actual program.

His thoughts started to bother him more and more. Finally, when he couldn’t stand it anymore, he got out of bed. He walked through the house and into one of the many supply rooms. He searched through the neatly organized cabinets until he found the one that contained the medical supplies.

Steve grabbed a few bottles of the strongest painkillers and walked back through the house to the entire room where Tony stored his alcohol. Steve grabbed a bottle of what looked like the strongest stuff there and carried it all back to his room, stopping to grab a few glasses from the kitchen.

Steve calmly set it all out on the desk in his room. He carefully crushed each pill in his hand and then dropped them into the glass filled with whiskey.

He carefully swirled each glass around until the pills had dissolved. Then, he sat at his desk and drank each glass down as quickly as he could. When he finished, he walked back over to his bed and lay down.

Steve stared at the ceiling as the sound from the tv wrapped around him. He didn’t really expect anything to happen from the drinks he’d just downed, but he figured it was worth a shot. At this point, the exhaustion was becoming impossible to handle. All he really wanted to do was sleep, and his body wouldn’t even let him do that.

He wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol and pills or just plain exhaustion, but Steve finally drifted off to sleep a while later.

 

The tv was still playing when he woke up the next morning. Steve rolled over and checked the alarm clock. It was nearly noon.

Steve laid in bed and contemplated getting up. When he thought about it, though, there was really no reason to get out of bed.

And so Steve rolled back over and closed his eyes again.

 

The sound of his phone ringing woke him up at 7 that evening. Steve groggily grabbed his phone off the nightstand and answered the call.

“Hi,” Natasha said.

“Hey,” Steve croaked back. He sat up in his bed.

“Wait, are you okay?” Natasha asked. She sounded worried.

“What? Yeah, I’m fine,” Steve said hurriedly. He grabbed a water bottle off the nightstand and sipped at it.

“Okay,” Natasha said slowly. “You sound weird.”

“I, uh, just woke up,” Steve said. “From a nap. How’s Bucky?”

“He’s fine. We’ve been pretty bored, actually. I told you this would be a boring mission.”

“I’m glad it’s boring,” Steve told her honestly.

“Me too, actually. Everyone’s just playing poker right now. Bucky’s winning, but that’s only because they didn’t let me play.”

Steve smiled. “Yeah, he’s pretty good at card games.”

“Okay, well, I have to go, but I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Natasha.”

“It’s not a problem, Steve. You’re sure you’re okay, though?”

“I’m fine, Natasha,” Steve said. “Really. Just tired.”

They said goodbye, and Steve laid back in bed. The silence grew heavy again after he hung up. Steve hated the silence.

Steve’s thoughts grew worse as the evening wore on. He lethargically ate a sandwich he found in the fridge, and wandered around the house a little more. His arms and legs felt so heavy, and his chest felt like there were weights piled on top of it.

Steve really wanted Bucky to come back. He knew he’d been devoting a lot of his time to him over the past while, even before he’d found him again. Before Bucky had shown up, Steve had been spending all of his time searching for him. When he was here, every moment of Steve’s day was planned around Bucky.

Without him here, Steve was rapidly realizing that he really had nothing in his life. Outside of his work with the Avengers, he didn’t really have any hobbies that he enjoyed. Drawing wasn’t so much of a hobby as it was an obsession, and Steve didn’t really feel like delving into that right now. He was tired of watching movies, and the thought of trying to read books with his thoughts like this was overwhelming.

Steve found himself standing back in his bedroom. He stared at the empty pill bottles and bottle of alcohol on the desk. He absentmindedly picked up one of the pill bottles and glanced at the label.

He laughed coldly when he added up the contents of the pills and the alcohol. What he’d taken last night would have easily killed a normal person three times over. He hadn’t even felt anything from it.

This pulled another, darker thought out of the back of Steve’s mind. He stood at the desk for a while, thinking about it, before he suddenly found himself in the kitchen. He didn’t remember walking there, but suddenly he was pulling a knife out of a drawer and walking back to his room.

Steve calmly sat down on the edge of his bathtub. He didn’t hesitate at all as he shrugged his sweater off, exposing his arms. Steve had killed enough people in his lifetime to know where the major arteries were in the body, and he carefully angled the knife into his skin.

The serum healed his body quickly, but it couldn’t protect against actual attacks. His deep cut along his arm successfully opened the right veins.

Steve set the knife down on the edge of the bathtub. He watched impassively as his blood poured out his arm for a moment, and then he pulled his phone out of his pocket. He found the timer on it, and hit the start button. He carefully sat that down next to the knife, and leaned back against the wall. He waited.

He started to feel dizzy after a while, but he ignored it until the world suddenly tilted sideways and his vision darkened.

 

Steve woke up lying on the floor next to the bathtub. He slowly sat up, wincing as arm protested. He glanced down at it, and sighed as he looked at the fresh scar that ran up the length of his arm. It had clearly stopped bleeding a while ago, and the scar was already on its way to disappearing completely.

Steve carefully got to his feet and set to work cleaning up the washroom. Once he’d gotten rid of the blood that coated the bathtub and his clothes, he slowly showered the rest of it off of him.

He was tired again by the time he finished. He crawled back into bed and closed his eyes.

His phone rang at some point, and he answered the call. He wasn’t sure what he said to Natasha, but it must have been convincing enough for her to hang up after a few minutes of polite conversation.

Time passed weirdly after that. Steve’s dreams were vivid and sometimes frightening, but he didn’t bother trying to get out of bed. He preferred the dreams.

The next time he woke up, it was because of the knocking on his door.

“Steve?” Bucky’s voice called. Steve struggled to open his eyes.

“Yeah?” he called back as he forced himself to sit up.

His door opened, and the light from the hallway flooded in. Steve winced as it hit his eyes. He didn’t remember turning all the lights off in his room, but he must have at some point.

“Were you asleep?” Bucky asked, frowning.

“Yeah,” Steve said groggily. “I was tired. How was the mission? Are you okay?”

Bucky was still staring at him. “It was good, and I’m fine. Everybody’s fine. Why were you asleep?”

“Because I was tired,” Steve said, more sharply than he meant to.

“It’s not even seven,” Bucky said, crossing his arms.

Steve shrugged. “I didn’t have anything else to do.”

Bucky didn’t say anything to that, but he was frowning. Steve studied him carefully, but he really did look okay. His face looked tired, but otherwise he seemed unharmed.

“Did you sleep okay while you were gone?” Steve asked him finally.

Bucky’s mouth twisted. “I, uh, didn’t really sleep.”

“At all?”

Bucky shrugged. “It was a new place, and I didn’t want to… I didn’t want to hurt anyone if I woke up and… got confused.”

“Oh,” Steve said. “Okay. Do you wanna, uh, get some sleep now then? You can go to your room or –“

“Can we sleep here instead?” Bucky interrupted. “There’s a window in this room.”

“Oh,” Steve said again. “Yeah, okay. I can sleep on the couch –“

Bucky apparently ignored that, because he walked straight across the room and threw himself down on the bed next to Steve. Steve froze, but Bucky looked like he was already asleep.

Steve stared wide eyed down at Bucky. Bucky rarely let him get this close.

Bucky looked like he was already deeply, deeply asleep. Steve slowly lay back down, feeling the heat of Bucky’s body even though there was a foot of space between them.

The aching tiredness that he always felt was growing stronger again, and Steve fell back asleep against his will.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys. Sorry if I've been updating this less lately. I don't really have any excuse except that I've been having a bit of a tough time personally. I'm really sorry, and I'll try and update more frequently


	8. We're fixing to die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Corpse Roads", by Keaton Henson. 
> 
> PLEASE READ THE TAGS BEFORE READING THIS CHAPTER! Major, major triggers for depression and suicide. Please be careful if you're triggered by things like that!

Bucky still woke up at least a few times per hour, but it was easier when they were in the same bed. Steve would hear Bucky’s breathing start to pick up, and he would mumble reassurances to him until Bucky fell back asleep.

This went on for hours, until Steve woke up feeling someone touching his arm. He sat upright in bed, pulling his arm out of Bucky’s grasp.

Bucky was sitting cross legged on the bed beside him, staring at Steve.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Steve stared at him, trying to slow his breathing after being woken so abruptly.

“What?”

“That,” Bucky said again. He reached forward and grabbed Steve’s arm again, twisting it so that Steve could see. Steve had completely forgotten that he was wearing a t-shirt, and the faint red scar that stretched up the length of his arm was clearly visible.

“Oh,” Steve said awkwardly, pulling his arm out of Bucky’s grasp again. “Nothing.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes at him. “That’s a knife wound.”

“It’s nothing,” Steve said impatiently. He wanted to go back to sleep. “It was just… it was just an experiment.”

“A knife wound experiment?”

“Yes.”

Bucky was quiet for a few moments, and Steve desperately hoped that he would let him go back to sleep.

“I’ll tell Natasha.”

Steve sighed and let himself fall back on his pillows.

“Fine. I don’t care,” he said sharply.

“She’ll be mad.”

“I don’t care,” Steve said again.

“You sound like a child.”

“ _You_ sound like a child.”

Bucky scowled at him. Steve scowled back.

“When did you get so argumentative?” Steve asked, his face half in his pillow.

“When you started acting like this.”

“Like what?”

Bucky paused while he thought about his words. “Like… like you used to. Sometimes.”

Steve rolled over so he could stare at him. “What do you mean?”

Bucky was frowning, staring off at something behind Steve’s head. That normally meant that he was trying to sort through his memories and make sense of them. “You used to get like this sometimes. Usually when you were sick.”

Steve had no idea what he was talking about. He stared at the dark ceiling, blinking slowly.

Bucky quietly got off the bed a few minutes later and wandered over to the door. He opened it, letting light spill into the room.

“I’m still telling Natasha,” he said quietly. Steve didn’t answer him.

 

Time continued to pass strangely for Steve after that. The distinction between days became meaningless, mainly because he didn’t sleep at regular times. He found he could sleep for days at a time, only waking up when Bucky came in. He still got up and ran with Bucky when Bucky wanted to, and he sometimes watched movies with him. Bucky always chose the movie, though, and Steve sat blankly as the images played across the screen.

He avoided the others as much as he could. He occasionally ran into them in the kitchen or in the hallways, but they didn’t exchange anything more than small talk. Even then, Steve couldn’t drum up the energy to put any kind of emotion into his words.

He was spending less time with Bucky than he had been before, though. Bucky was doing some sort of counselling over the phone that Pepper had set up, and he spent a lot of time each day doing that. In his free time, he actually spent a lot of time with Clint and Natasha. On several occasions, Steve wandered by the windows to see Bucky out with Clint, Natasha, and Tony, clearly having some kind of knife throwing contest. Clint was laughing, and Bucky was even smiling. Natasha was shaking her head, but she was smiling too. Tony looked frustrated. Steve thought about joining them, but decided that it was easier to return to his bed.

The guilt he felt about spending his days lying in bed just made things worse. He’d lie on his back and stare at the ceiling, unable to stop the thoughts running through his head. His body felt strong and healthy, just like it always did. He’d been given this body for a reason, and that reason was to help people. And here he was, just lying in a bed, doing nothing. Helping no one, and achieving nothing. He’d already spent enough of his life lying around sick, and yet here he was. He was healthy now, and there was nothing stopping him from going out and doing things. He should be out there, with his friends. Bucky needed his help, and Steve should be there to give it to him. All Steve had wanted for so long was to have Bucky back, and now he had it. He’d gotten exactly what he wanted, and he couldn’t even enjoy it. He couldn’t enjoy anything, because he was a useless piece of shit.

These feelings felt like they’d settled in his bones. Every breath he took was an effort to breathe back out, because his chest felt like it was being crushed by bricks. His muscles felt heavy and useless, even though rationally he knew they weren’t. His thoughts either moved too fast or too slowly, and there was nothing he could do to control them. Every thought was dark and melancholy, despite his efforts to break free of it. The darkness had invaded his mind and wrapped its way down around his heart.

Steve was trying his hardest, he really was. He wanted to get out of bed. He wanted to go outside, to go on missions with the others. He wanted to do something, _anything_ , to free his mind from the guilt he felt every second of every day. He needed to do something. He was just a waste of space, lying here in the bed in one of Tony’s spare bedrooms.

He knew that the others were worried about him. He could feel Bucky’s anxiety as Bucky lay beside him in bed every night. He could see the frown etched into Clint’s face when he talked to him, and the careful way Natasha phrased her sentences. He knew the way Bruce looked at him, and the way that Pepper whispered things into Tony’s ear when Steve was in the room with him. He didn’t want them to worry about him. They had other, far more important things to worry about. Steve was just a burden to them. He was holding them back from missions, he knew that. There was a reason that only half of them were going on every mission, and he knew that reason was him. The Avengers would be more efficient without him. They could save more people without him.

It really would be better if Steve wasn’t there at all.

These were the thoughts that ran through his head at all times of day, and these were the thoughts that he was thinking about when Natasha burst through Steve’s door one morning.

“Steve,” she said frantically. “Steve, something’s come up.”

Steve pushed himself up in bed to stare blankly at her.

“We just got a call from Coulson. There’s a mission he needs our help on. It’s big.”

“Okay,” Steve said flatly.

Natasha hesitated. “We’re all going, Steve. Do you want to come?”

“No,” Steve said honestly.

Natasha pushed her hair out of her face. “Okay. Well, we have to take Bucky. I promise we’ll take care of him, he’ll be fine. It’s just… we need him.”

“Okay,” Steve said again. Bucky could handle himself. Actually, Bucky was probably the least likely to get hurt on a mission out of all the Avengers.

“Are you going to be okay here by yourself?” Natasha asked carefully.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Natasha said again. “But, Steve, I’m not… I’m not comfortable with leaving you here alone.”

Steve stared impassively at her.

“But we don’t really have a choice right now. Look, this shouldn’t take long. Just… just hang out until we get back, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll be fine, Natasha. Really. I’m just tired.”

Natasha looked uncharacteristically stressed. “You’re sure you’re okay to stay here by yourself? If not…”

“If not, what?” Steve said, a little sharply. “I’ll just slow you down if I come with you. You guys should go. Take care of whatever this is. I’ll be here when you get back.”

Natasha looked torn, but Clint’s voice came from down the hallway.

“Nat! We have to go!”

Natasha glanced back and forth between the hallway and Steve.

“I’ll be fine,” Steve said again, trying to smile reassuringly. He didn’t think it worked. “You guys be safe, okay?”

“All right,” Natasha said finally. “I’ll call you when it’s over.”

“Good luck!” Steve called after her as she ran back out into the hall.

Steve slowly laid back in his bed as he heard the sounds of doors slamming and cars starting. The clamour of his friends’ voices started to fade as the engines roared to life. The sound of tires squealing on pavement let him know when everyone had left.

Steve spent the rest of the day lying in bed, like usual. The darkness got worse as the day wore on, and the silence in the house seemed to grow suffocating. The pain in his mind had somehow manifested into a sort of physical pain that spread throughout his body. He curled in around himself as every muscle ached, and the dark emptiness that filled his chest got stronger. All he wanted was for it to stop, for everything to stop.

He was so tired.

It was dark by the time that Steve got out of bed. He found himself wandering down to the weaponry room, which wasn’t locked. He idly wandered through the tables covered in various guns and arrows before finding a handgun.

Walking back to his room was nearly an impossible task. His legs felt so heavy and weak that each step was an effort, and the floor was cold against his feet.

He slumped against the wall once he got back into his room, letting himself slide down until he was sitting on the floor. His phone fell out of his pocket and landed on the carpet beside him, but Steve ignored it.

Steve had no idea how long he sat there for, the gun in his hand cool against his skin. He stayed slumped against the wall, watching the shadows move slowly across the furniture as the night wore on.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to do anything to stop the racing thoughts in his head. He opened his eyes again, staring in revulsion down at his hands. Hands that had killed, hands that had done nothing that they were supposed to. He was supposed to have saved the world, to have been a source of inspiration and hope for everyone. He had been given a gift that people would kill for. And here he was, sitting on the floor, hating himself and hating this gift that he’d been given. They should have given it to someone else. Steve should have died back in the 1940s, like he was supposed to. He should be dead, he should be fucking dead. He’d survived impossible situation after impossible situation. It was actually kind of funny, the fact that he wasn’t fucking dead yet.

Steve clicked the safety off the gun.

He leaned his head back against the wall, feeling his breaths starting to turn into sobs. This probably wouldn’t even kill him. Nothing else seemed to. He’d thought a lot about this, and a gunshot to the head was probably final enough. He doubted even the serum could bring him back from that.

Steve’s hand was shaking badly as he placed the gun against his temple. All he had to do was pull the trigger. All of this could stop. He could end all of this, if he just pulled the fucking trigger. It would be so easy, it was so fucking easy. He’d killed so many people, it should be easy at this point to do it to himself. He deserved it.

Steve sat like that, the gun pressed to his head and his chest shaking with sobs. He wanted to do it, he wanted to do it so badly, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t just pull the fucking trigger, he couldn’t –

His phone rang.

The sound shook Steve out of his thoughts, and he pulled the gun away from his head for a moment. He stared at his phone on the floor beside him, his breath still hitching in his chest.

Finally, Steve reached over with his free hand and put the phone to his ear.

“Hey, Steve,” Natasha’s voice said. She sounded happy. “It’s over, we took care of it. It was actually easier than I expected, although Clint tripped on some stairs and hit his face on the wall. Other than that, everybody’s fine – “

“Natasha?” Steve interrupted.

There was a long pause.

“Yes?”

“Can you come back?”

There was another long moment of silence before Natasha spoke again.

“We’re coming right now,” Natasha said hurriedly. Her voice sounded weird. It wasn’t like her to sound so frantic. “Steve, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

Holding the phone to his ear was a lot of work, and Steve let the phone fall back onto the floor next to him. He could hear Natasha still talking frantically, but he stopped listening. The gun was still in his hand.

He stayed like that for a long time. Long enough that he heard the sound of a car racing back up the long driveway, and doors slamming open in the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay between chapters, guys. Between actual life stuff and working on that AU I'm writing, I don't have a whole lot of time right now. The delay on this is also just because this is... dark. It's a dark thing to write. It's probably a dark thing to read, too. I'll try and update this more often, I promise. As always, I'm at cameronwolfe.tumblr.com if you want to come talk to me or let me know what you think!


	9. Resolved for my life to wear a funeral suit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Corpse Roads", by Keaton Henson.

Steve was staring blankly at the wall across from him when he heard Natasha’s voice calling his name from somewhere in the house. He could hear other voices, too, but they were all arguing and he couldn’t be bothered to try and listen.

“Steve?” Natasha’s voice shouted again, suddenly closer. He heard her footsteps run down the hallway.

Light flooded into the room as the door burst open, and Steve blinked slowly. He didn’t bother to move his eyes away from the wall until Natasha moved into his line of sight. She was staring at him worriedly, but he didn’t meet her gaze.

She disappeared again, and Steve heard the sound of her talking to someone quickly in the hallway. The door shut again, and she moved back in front of him.  

“Hey,” she said softly. Steve didn’t respond.

Natasha knelt down, careful not to touch him. “Hey, Steve,” she said again. “Is it okay if I take that gun from you?”

Steve didn’t want her to take it, and so his fingers tightened around it.

“Okay, that’s fine,” she said quickly. They sat in silence for another long moment.

“What’s going on, Steve?” Natasha asked finally. Steve dragged his eyes away from the wall to look at her, but the thought of explaining what he was feeling was too overwhelming.

“Okay,” she tried again. “Well, what happened while we were gone?”

Steve stared at her through half-lidded eyes. “Nothing,” he said finally, his throat hoarse.

“Well, something must have happened,” Natasha said slowly. “You seemed all right when we left…”

“I was waiting for you to leave,” Steve told her bluntly. She stared at him.

Finally, she sat down in front of him. “You waited until we got back,” Natasha said softly. “And that makes me think that you don’t really want to do this to yourself.”

Steve laughed, or tried to. It came out as more of a sob.

“I don’t want to!” he said. “I don’t want to at all.”

“Then why?”

“I just…” Steve said, staring at the wall again. “I don’t know what else to do, Natasha. It’s not… nothing’s changing. It’s just getting worse.”

“I know,” Natasha said calmly. “But, Steve, I think…. I think this is the worst of it, here. What’s happening to you now? I think you’ve pretty much hit the lowest point, right here.”

“I’ve said that to myself before, and you know what? It just keeps getting worse.”

“Okay,” Natasha said slowly. “Steve, I’m not going to give you some bullshit about how everything is going to be easier from now on. It’s not. It’s going to keep being hard. Honestly? It’s probably going to take you a while to start feeling better. But you’ve already been to hell and back, Steve. You’ve been through things that would have destroyed anyone else a long time ago. And you’re still here, you’re still fighting.”

“I don’t want to fight anymore, though,” Steve told her. His voice was rough. “I’m so tired, Natasha.”

“I know,” Natasha said again. “I think that if you try, though, if you just keep going a little while longer, you’ll be happy that you stayed. Even if it takes a while, I think that you’ll look back on this and be glad that you didn’t do this to yourself.”

Steve stared tiredly at her.

“And really, Steve, I know you’re going to have a hard time believing me on this, but I need you to listen. We would all miss you so, so much. I know you think that we don’t need you or want you around.”

Steve opened his mouth to protest, but he shut it again when Natasha raised her eyebrow.

“That isn’t true, and I think that’s hard for you to see right now. But everyone here cares about you so much, even if Tony pretends not to sometimes. I’m not even going to get into how valuable you are to the Avengers. Honestly, we’d keep you around even if you couldn’t fight another day in your life. You’re important to us, Steve. You’re like no one else I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a lot of people in my life.”

Natasha kept talking, and Steve was sure that it was more incredibly kind things. Her voice was starting to drift around him again now, though. His thoughts were so, so dark, and so slow. The air in the room felt like it was pressing in on his skin and sinking down into his bones. This pain in his chest was still curling its way through his limbs and up into his head, and he just couldn’t fucking take it anymore.

Steve went to move the gun up towards his head.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed how close Natasha had gotten her hands. The moment he moved his arm, she lunged forward and grabbed his hand that held the gun. His arm automatically tensed against her, but she was faster and more dexterous than he was.

She had the gun out of his hand instantly. He was pretty sure that she’d broken his wrist in the process, but he didn’t feel it. It didn’t matter.

He didn’t tried to fight her on it. He let his now-empty hand fall back to the floor beside him and closed his eyes.

 

Things moved at a weird pace after that. He knew that there were people in the room with him after that, but it didn’t bother him. He was drifting in his thoughts, his limbs like lead and his heartbeat slowly drumming in his ears.

Steve was pretty sure that they injected him with something at some point. He couldn’t really feel his arms properly, but the prick of a needle was all too familiar.

He ended up on his bed again, although he wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there. He opened his eyes once, staring at the light on the ceiling above him. The murmur of voices in the room was still there, but Steve didn’t bother trying to figure out who was talking. It didn’t bother him.

He drifted in and out of a strange haze. At times he was asleep, but occasionally he’d wake up only to stare at the ceiling again.

Eventually, the sound in the room started to quiet down. Someone mercifully turned the light off at some point, and Steve nearly sighed in relief.

He lay on that bed for hours after that, feeling like his body was sinking into the mattress. He didn’t move once, not even to stretch his legs or arms. He didn’t need to. His limbs felt like they were turning into stone, and his lungs were already made of lead.

There was always at least one person in his room at all times, but there were usually at least two. Steve didn’t try to listen to their conversations. He let the murmur of their voices wash over him, just like every sensation.

It was still dark outside when Bucky came in for the first time. Steve didn’t need to look at him to recognize his presence. He’d know the sound of Bucky’s breathing anywhere.

 Bucky said something to whoever else was in Steve’s room, and the person left. They closed the door softly behind them, and the room was quiet.

He stood at the foot of Steve’s bed for a long moment, the sound of their breathing mixing together.

Finally, Bucky slowly climbed onto the bed. He crawled up until he was kneeling next to Steve before he let himself lie down next to him.

They lay there side by side in the dark room for another moment. Bucky leaned over and wrapped his metal arm over Steve’s stomach and securely around his back.

Steve moved for the first time in what had to be hours. He rolled onto his side and pulled Bucky towards him, pressing his body into Bucky’s. Bucky’s arms tightened around Steve just as Steve tightened his around Bucky. Bucky’s legs tangled in his, and he buried his face in Steve’s neck.

They lay like that for hours, not moving. The steady rise and fall of Bucky’s chest against Steve’s was comforting, as was the heat that radiated from Bucky’s skin. Steve’s thoughts grew calmer than they had been in months.

Steve finally fell asleep again, in the quiet of the room. The only sound he could hear was Bucky’s soft breathing next to him, and all he could feel was the pressure of Bucky’s arms holding him tightly. That was all that existed in that moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so, so sorry for the delay in updates! Honestly, it's just taking me a while to write these particular chapters. This is hard to write about, and it's not exactly fun. I promise that this will updated a lot more frequently after this, mostly because this chapter here is kind of the lowest point, and was probably the hardest for me to write.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your comments, kudos, and messages about this. It means so much to me that you guys take time out of your day to let me know what you thought. Thank you, thank you, thank you.


	10. To old happenings and things that are done

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Haunt" by Bastille.

Things changed after that. Steve was actually a little surprised at how drastic it was.

The main thing was that Steve was never alone. Ever. Even when he took a shower, someone waited outside the door for him. If he took too long to turn the shower off, they would bang on the door until he yelled that he was all right.

Steve was also no longer allowed to stay in bed all day. He refused to get up the first few mornings, but apparently Natasha wasn’t joking when she said that she’d enlisted Bucky to help.

After being forcefully dragged out of bed, Steve had to go running with Bucky. Natasha told him that it was more for Bucky’s benefit than his, but Steve had a feeling that she was just trying to motivate him. She knew that he’d do anything for Bucky, including getting out of bed even though that was the last thing he wanted to do.

Steve did have to admit, though, that he felt better after running. Staying in bed was much easier, but it felt good to actually do something with his day. Running next to Bucky made him feel more alive than he had felt in a while. The heaviness that was always present in his limbs and muscles lightened as he ran, as his body did what it had been built to do. The fresh air felt almost as good as the sun did on his face.

At first, Steve had afternoons and evenings relatively free. He was allowed to just sit and watch endless movies with Bucky, as long as he ate and slept at the right times.

After only a few days, his schedule changed again. Afternoons were now completely taken up with therapy.

He argued with Natasha and Pepper over that. They refused to listen, no matter how much he protested. Steve’s argument was that talking to some stranger wouldn’t help at all. Natasha’s argument was that Steve’s way of dealing with things had led to him trying to shoot himself in the head.

Steve finally gave in. He and Natasha had been in the middle of another heated argument about it when Bucky had finally said something. He’d been sitting quietly next to Steve in the living room, but he spoke up in the middle of Natasha’s sentence.

“Just do it, Steve,” Bucky said tiredly. “It helps.”

Steve tried to take the anger out of his voice before he spoke to Bucky. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, Bucky,” he tried to reassure him. “I know that you really like it, and that it’s really helpful to you. I just don’t think that it would do anything for me – “

“You won’t know until you try,” Bucky told him.

Between Natasha’s arguments and Bucky’s logic, Steve couldn’t win.

 

That was how Steve found himself sitting in one of Tony’s many living rooms, staring at an ugly painting before the window. He was sitting on a couch against the wall, and he tried to resist the urge to cross his arms.

The woman across from him looked to be around fifty. She was professionally dressed in a suit jacket and skirt, but her smile was kind. She’d introduced herself as Dr. Eleanor Campbell, and shaken his hand before sitting on the couch across from him. Steve had no idea where Pepper had found her, or how much they must be paying her to fly all the way out here on such short notice. Pepper had assured Steve that Dr. Campbell had been thoroughly checked out by Stark Industries, and that she was sworn to absolute secrecy.

“Okay, Steve,” Dr. Campbell said calmly. “I normally start my sessions by getting a thorough family and medical history from you, and then proceeding from there. However, your case is also a little different than most that I handle. So I’m going to throw all that procedure out the window, and start off on a different track. Is that okay with you?”

Steve stared at the painting on the wall behind her. “Uh, sure.”

“Great. I think what we’ll do is mostly just talk in these sessions. I’ll try to teach you some skills along the way, but I do think that this is the best track. Steve, if at any time you’re uncomfortable with the way I handle these sessions, or the way I ask you to talk about something, please tell me. It’s important that you and I work together on this. I don’t want this to seem like a chore to you.”

“Okay,” Steve said awkwardly. He didn’t really have any idea on how these things were normally supposed to proceed.

Dr. Campbell smiled reassuringly at him. “All right. I’ll start off with a simple question, then. How have you been feeling lately, Steve?”

Steve shrugged, still staring at the wall. “Fine, I guess.”

It was a blatant lie, and they both knew it. Steve wasn’t even sure why he bothered.

“Well, I heard that your friends found you a few days ago trying to kill yourself.”

Steve didn’t know what to say to that.

“Could you talk to me about what you were feeling when you decided to do that?”

Steve looked down at his hands. “I, uh, I don’t know. It wasn’t… I wasn’t really feeling anything.”

“Okay,” Dr. Campbell said calmly. She jotted something down on her clipboard. “What about how you’ve been feeling the last few weeks?”

Steve shrugged again. “I don’t know. Same as ever, I guess.”

“So you’ve been feeling like this for a while, then?”

“Yeah,” Steve said hesitantly. He wasn’t very good at this.

“Okay. Has this been going on since you woke up in this century and began work with the Avengers, or was it happening before then?”

Steve stared at her. Dr. Campbell smiled a little.

“I’ve got a very high security clearance,” she said.

“Apparently,” Steve muttered. “Uh, not before, I don’t think. Although…”

“Although?”

“Well, B – “ Steve cut himself off.

Dr. Campbell smiled reassuringly again. “It’s okay. I know about that too. You don’t need to hide anything from me, Steve. I’ve been briefed on everything.”

Pepper _had_ cleared her, and Steve trusted Pepper’s ability to handle things like this.

“Okay,” Steve said hesitantly. “Well, uh, Bucky said that he’s seen me like this before.”

“And do you think that’s true?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. I mean, I was sick a lot. Before. And I was angry about that, a lot of the time. About everything that I couldn’t do. It was frustrating.”

“Sounds like it. Did those feelings go away after you received the serum?”

“Yes,” Steve said automatically. “Well, mostly.”

“Why just mostly?”

“Well, I mean, I wasn’t sick anymore. And I felt better once I actually got to do some fighting. I got to help out, you know?”

“That’s understandable.”

“But it wasn’t really… it wasn’t like a vacation or anything. It was still war. It was pretty awful, at times. Most of the time. But everyone felt that way. It wasn’t just me.”

“Well, that might be true,” Dr. Campbell said, leaning back against the couch. “I wasn’t there, and I won’t pretend to understand what it was like. But I do know that you went straight from fighting that war to fighting one here.”

Steve looked desperately at the clock on the wall. Time seemed to be moving so slowly. “I had to.”

“I know. And I’m not saying you did the wrong thing, by any means. Who knows where we’d all be right now if you and your teammates hadn’t won that fight. But that still sounds pretty exhausting.”

He shrugged again. “That doesn’t matter. It had to be done. I was fine.”

Dr. Campbell was frowning at something on her clipboard. “It says here that you were called in to work with the Avengers… two weeks after being woken up? Is that correct?”

“Uh, something like that, yeah,” Steve said. He wasn’t entirely sure, to be honest. That time was all kind of a blur.

“That must have been hard.”

“It didn’t matter if it was,” Steve said sharply. He glared at his folded hands.

“Steve.”

He looked up. Dr. Campbell was watching him, no longer smiling. She didn’t look angry though.

“Steve, I’m not your enemy here. I’m not here to judge you on your actions, or to see if you’re fit for duty. I’m here to help you. That’s all.”

“I know,” Steve said, although his words still had some venom.

“Okay. I just had to make sure that you knew that. I understand why you said yes when they asked you to work with the Avengers. It just seems to me that there wasn’t a lot of time for you to process what had happened to you.”

“It doesn’t – “ Steve cut himself off before he repeated himself for the third time.

“It does matter, Steve. Yes, you did what you had to do. That doesn’t make your feelings and your emotions any less valid, particularly about that time in your life. It doesn’t make them any less relevant now.”

“There wasn’t…” Steve said, frustrated. “I don’t know how I was feeling then, okay? I don’t know.”

“That’s fine,” Dr. Campbell said. She was still infuriatingly calm.  “Could you tell me what kind of things you did, during that time? It must have been a shock, waking up to this new world.”

Steve relaxed a little at that. He could do this. He had a good memory.

“Not much, really. I didn’t have a lot to do. SHIELD gave me a place to stay and more money than I thought was even possible. They said it was for my ‘service’ to the country. Then I just kind of… wandered around. Looked at everything.”

“It must have been pretty surprising, what with the technology that’s around these days.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. He felt a little calmer now. “It made it easier, though. Once I figured out how to use the internet, I spent most of my time just sitting in my apartment and reading. Researching things, you know?”

“What kinds of things did you research?”

“People, mostly. Tried to find out what happened to my friends, stuff like that. Big events, too. Other wars, earthquakes, assassinations. How the war ended. Things like that.”

“That must have been a little overwhelming.”

Steve shrugged. “Yeah, well, turns out a lot of stuff has happened since world war two.”

“What about your friends? People you’d cared about? That must have been hard.”

Steve frowned again. “Sort of. I don’t know. I mean, most of them ended up with pretty good lives, after. I was happy about that.”

“I’m glad to hear that. That must have still been difficult, though. Missing out on all of that.”

“Nothing I could do about it.”

“That’s true. How did you feel about it, though?”

“I didn’t, really,” Steve said slowly.

“It must have been a lot, having to deal with all of that at once.”

“I guess.”

“Was there anyone there to help you deal with it?”

“No,” Steve said. “Everyone was busy. Aliens and all that. And I also, I…”

Dr. Campbell waited.

“I think I was in shock, for most of it. I don’t really remember feeling much of anything.”

“That would make sense,” she said easily. “That’s a pretty traumatic experience, not to mention the trauma from the war itself.”

“I guess. But then I had the Avengers stuff to do, so.”

“Do you remember feeling anything strongly during that time?”

“Not really. Most of it was just fighting. Fighting isn’t that hard, especially when it’s just against aliens.”

“It’s easier against aliens? That sounds a lot harder to me,” Dr. Campbell said with a small smile.

“No,” Steve insisted. “They were attacking us, attacking our world. It’s easier, then. It was us or them. I didn’t care if I hurt or killed them.”

“But that’s different than fighting in the war? Wouldn’t it still have been a version of ‘us or them’?”

“No,” Steve said again. “That’s different. It’s different, then.”

“How so?”

Steve shrugged. “It’s not… the war wasn’t like that. For me. It wasn’t just black or white, like that. Most of the time. Sometimes it was, but not always. Sometimes I’d have to look someone in the eyes before I killed them, and they weren’t… they weren’t evil. Well, some of them were. Not all of them. This one kid, one time, he couldn’t have been older than fifteen. I have no idea how they even let him fight, but he was there. And he was carrying a rifle and he was staring at me and he was terrified, you could see it. He didn’t want to be there, any more than I did. But then he looked over my shoulder and he tried to shoot Bucky and so I shot him. He was just a kid, though. Yeah, he was on the other side, but that didn’t make him evil.”

“That’s true,” Dr. Campbell said softly.

The rest of the session continued like that. They didn’t spend too much time discussing Steve’s deep personal feelings, to his relief. Dr. Campbell mainly asked him about specific events, and he described them to her. His answers to any other questions about his feelings usually got the response ‘I don’t know”, but Dr. Campbell didn’t seem bothered by that.

“Well, Steve,” Dr. Campbell said as their time finally ran out. “I think this has been a good first session. I also wanted to let you know that normally I would recommend a course of medication as well, in situations like this. But I don’t think that it would do much of anything in your case.”

“Probably not.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow, though,” Dr. Campbell warned. Steve didn’t want to be rude, but he couldn’t help sighing a little.

He was strangely exhausted, after. He still had an hour until Natasha would come make him eat dinner, and so he trudged back to his room and fell onto his bed. Bucky was sitting on his half of the bed, frowning at something on a laptop.

They didn’t speak for a minute, as Steve stared at the ceiling and tried not to fall asleep.

“Bucky?” he asked finally. Bucky looked up from the laptop.

“What.”

“What did you mean, earlier? When you said you’d seen me like this before?”

“Oh,” Bucky said. He closed the laptop, frowning. “I thought about that more. I figured it out, now. You used to get like this a lot. Usually when you were sick.”

“I don’t remember that.”

Bucky shrugged. “We never really talked about it before. You used to tell me to fuck off whenever I asked about it.”

Steve frowned. “I definitely did not.”

“You definitely did,” Bucky told him. He laid down beside Steve and stared at the roof too. “I think you’ve gotten too comfortable with everyone thinking you’re an angel around here. You should hear the way they talk about you. It’s hard to listen to. You used to be snarkier than Tony.”

“I was not!”

“Definitely were.”

Steve made a face. “I was never rude.”

“Nah, but you could sure go off on people who _were_ rude.”

“They deserved it.”

“Probably.”

They lay in comfortable silence for another moment longer before Natasha’s voice came from the other side of the closed door.

“Steve! Bucky! Dinner! Right now!”

“Ugh,” both of them said together.


	11. So lead me back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Ghosts That We Knew", by Mumford and Sons. 
> 
> HEADS UP this is the last chapter. There's an explanation for that at the end

Steve had therapy every single day for the next three weeks.

He didn’t enjoy it.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience, by any means. All they did was sit and talk for a few hours, but Steve always felt exhausted afterward. It would normally take Steve hours of intense exercise to even begin to feel tired, but a couple hours of therapy left him feeling like he could sleep for a week. It wasn’t just a mental sense of exhaustion, either. Even his arms and legs felt weak and useless after a few particularly grueling sessions.

Steve didn’t have any dramatic breakthroughs. There weren’t any moments where he broke down in tears, or where he threw the furniture through the windows.

He just sat and talked.

Dr. Campbell listened. There was never any judgement in her face, or in her voice. She rarely offered her own opinions, and never commented negatively. She just listened.

She stressed a few points, over and over. It seemed to be important to her for Steve to realize that his feelings were valid. Even if he thought he was being irrational about something, or would try to justify his actions, she insisted that his emotions about it were valid. That they mattered.

Of course, she also pointed out that a lot of Steve’s anger was misplaced. The more they talked, the more it became apparent that a lot of Steve’s rage and pain came from his frustration and guilt about the things that had happened to him. Guilt for the things he did in the war, guilt over losing Bucky. Guilt over crashing that plane in the ice and sleeping for seventy years while Bucky suffered at Hydra’s hands. Guilt that Steve got to live while so many others died in his place. Guilt that he couldn’t win every battle, couldn’t save every person.

Dr. Campbell assured Steve that guilt was a normal human emotion. It wasn’t something that he could just let go of. Even if he knew that some of it was irrational, he couldn’t just… get over it.

What he could do, though, was work through it. Accept that he couldn’t change the things that had happened. Accept that he’d done all he could at that point in time. The only thing he could do now was move forward. He had to look at his future, and at what he had now. The past was done. It was over, and it couldn’t be touched anymore.

All he could do was change his future, and he could only do that in the present. The things he had now were things that he had never even dreamed of having again.

He had Bucky again. He was different, of course, but so was Steve. And they had time now. More time than they’d had before. Time to heal, and time to move forward.

Steve had friends, besides just Bucky. He knew that they cared about him, he really did. He hoped they knew how much he cared about them, too. Dr. Campbell said they did.

 

It wasn’t easy.

It wasn’t easy for Steve to sit in Tony’s house and watch his friends go off to fight battles. He hated watching them leave and knowing that they were putting their lives on the line to save others, while he sat in the safety and comfort of this giant mansion.

Dr. Campbell made him talk about that, too. She told him that he wasn’t obligated to risk his life to save others. That he didn’t have to sacrifice himself to protect other people. That his life was just as valuable. 

Steve’s counter argument was that he was stronger. He’d been given this body for a reason. He could take hits that no one else could, and he could fight battles that would have killed a normal human twice over.

Dr. Campbell assured him that he’d already done so. He’d already done so much for the world. He didn’t owe anyone anything. If he wanted to go back to work, if he wanted to go back and fight again, that was his choice. But he shouldn’t do it out of a sense of responsibility or debt. He should do it if it made him happy, and if he wanted to do it.

Steve did want to.

 

It took a full month before he started feeling a little better. It wasn’t like he just woke up one morning and felt great. It was far more gradual. It was just small things that he noticed at first. Things that made a difference.

He found himself laughing when Bucky muttered something at Tony under his breath. He smiled when Clint won a poker game and did an awful victory dance, much to Natasha’s chagrin. One evening, all of them watched the Harry Potter movies and Steve found himself desperately wanting to watch the next one.

It was little things like that that were different. He was enjoying things again, little by little. He watched the sunset while he was on an evening run with Bucky, and found that he could see the beauty in it again. Steve watched Bucky grin as he beat Clint in a chess match, and knew that he wanted to see Bucky smile more.

There were still bad days, of course. There were times when his whole world went dark again, and not even Natasha and Bucky’s pleading could make him get out of bed. Some entire therapy sessions were spent in silence, as Steve sat and stared at the wall numbly. Each time that happened, Dr. Campbell said the same thing to him.

“This will end,” she would say softly. “What you’re feeling right now may seem permanent, but it isn’t. Tomorrow is a new day, even if it seems like this one will never end.”

Sure enough, things changed. Even if Steve woke up the next morning feeling exactly the same as he had the day before, inevitably something would happen that he’d be glad he was there for. Sometimes he’d open his eyes feeling like he being pulled down by the darkness that was coiled around his heart. Then he’d heard the soft sound of Natasha singing from the kitchen, or he’d roll over and look at Bucky lying next to him, his face so much softer in sleep.

Eventually, the day came when Steve was able to pull himself out of bed. Even if it was a bad day, his head was clear enough now to know that he’d feel better if he actually got up and got moving. He started going to therapy because he knew he should, not because Natasha was making him.

 

He got to go on his first mission four weeks after he finally stopped seeing Dr. Campbell every day. He still had sessions with her three times a week, but the rest of the days were his now.

It was an easy little mission. They even let Bucky come along, provided that Steve would keep an eye on him.

All they did was go in and arrest some old Hydra employees that were hiding out in a small dental office. No one got killed or even hurt, and it took less than a day.

Steve knew that it was a good first step. He felt fine through all of it, and he still felt fine by the time they got back to Tony’s mansion. He was glad that nothing had gone drastically wrong on the mission, but he felt confident that he could have handled that even if that was the case.

 

Steve and Bucky went back to DC a month later. Steve introduced Bucky to Sam (in a less violent manner than their initial meeting), and he wasn’t surprised when Bucky took an immediate liking to him. Sam helped Bucky join all sorts of meetings and programs for veterans, all of which Bucky said he actually didn’t mind going to.

Steve still saw Dr. Campbell once a week. Tony was apparently still paying her to move to whichever city Steve was in, and Steve had to admit that he didn’t mind. On his bad days, he could even call her and book an extra appointment if he needed to.

The Avengers made Steve wait another month after that before they let him come back full time. Even then, he had to pass numerous psych evals before he got the official all-clear.

All of them soon fell back into a schedule, or as much as a schedule as you can have while being part of the Avengers. While Steve was away, Bucky stayed with Sam until he got back. Steve also had to take at least a month off between missions, which was not optional. During that time, he was supposed to relax as much as he possibly could. He also had to keep seeing Dr. Campbell, which Steve would have done anyway.

 

Things got bad again five months later for no apparent reason. Steve just started having more bad days than good ones again, with nothing to trigger it or to cause it.

This time, he said something before it got worse. He stopped going on missions for a while, and went back to see Dr. Campbell a few times a week.

A month later, he felt well enough to go back on missions full time.

 

Things weren’t perfect, and he still had bad days. Sometimes those bad days turned into bad weeks, and occasionally into months. Each one was a little shorter than the last, though, and for the first time in his life, Steve actually felt content.

 He'd be okay. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys. I know this ending came a little abruptly, but I tried to wrap it up as much as I possibly could. I know some of you are probably going to be disappointed about this, and I'm really sorry! Honestly, I had to be in a really dark place to write this and it was taking a toll on me. It got to be so it wasn't fun anymore. It felt like a chore, and I was always deeply unhappy whenever I finished a chapter. I knew it was time to stop when I opened my document to start a new chapter and had to leave the house half an hour later because I felt so terrible. 
> 
> That being said, I still really enjoyed writing this and I hope you all enjoyed reading it. I tried to make the ending as satisifying and conclusive as I could, I really did. I wish I could have drawn out this chapter a little more, and given it more depth. I would have liked to examine Steve's recovery in more detail, particularly compared to Bucky's. I know this probably will seem rushed, and I'm sorry about that. I'm hoping to come back in a little while and maybe write a third part of this series looking more into Steve's recovery and therapy, but right now that just isn't possible.
> 
> I'll still be around, though! You can find me on tumblr at cameronwolfe.tumblr.com. I'm still writing my other current fic, which you can take a look at if you're interested! 
> 
> I've loved talking to you guys and hearing your feedback on this, and as always I am so so grateful for all of your comments and messages. They mean the world to me, and I am forever thankful to all of you for being so kind.


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